Her sneakers, half untied like a sloppy teenager’s, slid on the shoulder, the dirt sandy, almost like silk. The edge was so steep you could imagine at night, with streetlamps several spans away, getting turned around, getting lost inside yourself.
Off the shoulder, there was a drop, and a shallow ditch heavy with old rain, filmy pools of motor oil floating on top. One lone flag lay flat in the water, spinning like a propeller, like those whirlybird seeds that fell from the maples.
This was where Ryan fell. His body knocked, hurled, jettisoned.
There were no skid marks on the road, the reporter said. Whoever the driver was, he never even set his foot on the brake.
The silver car never stopped.
The shallow ravine looked scraped clean, long rake grooves thatched across, combed for evidence, for glass, for paint. As the slope cantered down, it was like the earth folded up upon itself, a green swoop, a pelt of foliage at its center.
Even though it was daylight, just shy of noon, it was the darkest place she’d ever seen, a cut in the earth.
I saw one of his shoes.
That was what Eric had said, nearly asleep and holding her arm, stroking it, the night after they heard the news, after he’d been to Ash Road.
She thought about Ryan’s shoe tumbling down, one lace spinning like a whirligig.
I saw it, Eric had told her. His voice mournful, lost.
Now the words sounded different. Meant something different.
I saw it. Because he was there when it happened.
“Why did Ryan have a picture of the place he died right on his refrigerator?” Drew said, standing next to the car.
Katie didn’t say anything for a moment.
“Maybe it was his favorite place to walk,” she tried, finally.
Drew looked around doubtfully.
“Maybe if you didn’t want anyone to see you,” Katie said, thinking.
“Maybe.”
“Or something else.”
A meeting place, a lovers’ rendezvous point.
One that sentimental Ryan kept a photo of on his refrigerator door.
Now Katie could see it.
There’s a hundred ways sex can ruin you. That was Eric’s doomful warning to Devon.
Amid the balloons and banners of Lacey Weaver’s party, had Devon gotten a call, a text, not from Hailey but from Ryan? Ryan saying, Let’s meet at our spot. I don’t have my car. But I’ll be waiting.
Meet me at the turn in Ash Road. You know the spot.
Had Eric seen the texts? He must have. There’s a hundred ways sex can ruin you. And he wouldn’t let it, wouldn’t let her.
“Why are you going down there, Mom?”
“Just to see.”
She eased down into the shallow ravine.
Drew was looking down at her, eyes black under the overcast sky.
A wind glittered up glass and leaves as she eased down, as she saw.
Paint, glass; there were hundreds of chips, fragments, specks, shards.
And Ryan had fallen down here. And there were a million flecks of ephemera that could have pressed into the folds of his clothing, scattered though his hair.
She realized it in a flash: The police will never know who hit him, not for sure. Not with all this. So much glitter, a mad confetti. From a decade or more of bottles lobbed from car windows, from battered fenders, a car hood into a tree stump, teens stalking the woods, forties in hand, in pursuit of magic and mayhem.
It reminded her of the time she and Eric, that first wild summer, got caught trespassing in the woods behind the church. Running from the security guard, laughing and huffing in cold air, then Eric trying to boost her over a wire fence and her sandal caught in one of the zig hooks. Trapped at the top, she couldn’t shake it loose, her chest pressed against the chain mesh, laughing so hard and crying so hard she couldn’t move.
The fence left diamonds on her chest for days.
The most brilliant of tattoos—a lifetime of good luck, Eric promised. Diamonds are forever, right?
Like hog rings, her mother said when she saw them, shaking her head. And that guy’s never going to marry you.
But then he did. He did.
Devon inside her already, waiting. He did.
At the end of the summer she told herself she loved him so much she would rather die than lose him. And she still felt it. Because there’s a hundred ways sex can ruin you but there’s no end to the ways love can.
Walking back up the slope, she heard something, a branch cracking, and she could feel her ankle turning, her body starting to pitch forward, and suddenly Drew appeared, his hand grabbing for her, trying to hold on to her.
“Mom!”
She caught herself, dug her heel hard into the mud, steadied them both.
“Thanks, sweetie,” she said. “I’m okay.”
But there was a look on Drew’s face she’d never seen, his hands gripping her impossibly hard, as if she were still falling.
“Mom, I want to go home,” Drew whispered. “I wanted to for the longest time.”
Chapter Twenty
He didn’t say anything during the short drive, but when she pulled into the garage, Drew grabbed her arm, the seat belt straining.
“Mom, why did you leave me by myself?”
She unfastened her belt, turned and faced him.