The Next Best Thing
“Yes.”
“He wasn’t the most thorough guy.”
She didn’t say anything.
“I looked at the report, and it says, right here, mother distracted by sick child. But here’s the thing. I’d bet that she could tell if you were really about to have a seizure or not. You ever think about that?”
Faith frowned. “No. I mean, you might be right about that, but...no, I’m pretty sure she thought I was.”
“Well, I never could fool my mom, and I tried really hard. Anyway, even if she thought you were having a seizure, she’d know that she couldn’t help you. There’s nothing you can do for a person who’s seizing, and you were buckled in, nice and safe. Right?”
“Right.”
“So I wondered, even if your mom did think you were having a seizure, would she take her eyes off the road for very long?”
Faith pushed away the memory of her mother’s face, peering back at her in those last seconds. “She did, Levi. She looked back at me.”
“Right. And what did she say?”
Faith took a deep breath, the air feeling heavy and thick. “She asked if I was okay.”
“Do you remember exactly?” Levi looked at his watch.
Of course she did. “She said, ‘Honey, are you okay? Faith?’”
Constance Holland’s last words. Trying to take care of her daughter, checking on the child whose selfishness would kill her. It felt as if a knife was stuck in Faith’s throat.
“So maybe three, five seconds to say that?”
“I guess.”
“I took the report out to the accident site,” he said.
A vision of that maple tree, that field, flared in her mind. It was horribly intimate, knowing Levi had been there, that place where she’d sat in her own urine, whimpering for her mother. In all these years, Faith had never gone back to that spot.
“Here’s the thing, Faith.” He hesitated. “Like I said, Chief Griggs wasn’t the most thorough guy. He knew Kevin Hart had run the stop sign, figured your mom was distracted by you and that’s why she didn’t see him coming. And that was the end of the investigation.”
“Do you have a point, Levi?” She was so tired.
“Just...just bear with me. It’s a good point. Well worth hearing. Okay?”
She nodded.
He opened up the laptop and hit a key. “I took some measurements based on what was in the report. Things like skid marks at the point of impact and how far your car rolled before it hit the tree, the weight of your car, the weight of Kevin Hart’s.” He turned the screen so she could see. “This is an accident reconstruction program. Obviously, Chief Griggs didn’t have it twenty years ago.”
A blade of remembered fear sawed through her. There was the intersection, shown in stark lines. Two car icons, one red and one blue, touched each other. The red icon was bigger, pointing north on the road labeled Hummel Brook. That would be her mom’s Dodge Caravan.
Levi pointed to the screen. “Based on the skid marks, she was doing about forty, and Kevin was doing sixty-five. Not forty-five, like Kevin said. But the chief didn’t do the math. Kevin left twenty feet of skid marks and sent your car rolling out to that tree. That puts him at about sixty-five.”
The fact that Faith had been awake for twenty-one hours, and had told Levi her damning secret, was catching up with her. His words didn’t quite make sense to her fuzzy brain. Even her hand didn’t seem capable of petting Blue anymore. Her dog flopped on the floor, his muzzle on her bare foot.
“Estimating that it took four seconds for your mom to look back at you—which is a lot of time to take your eyes off the road, but assuming your memory is right—that puts you guys here.” He hit a key, and the red car moved back.
Faith looked at the screen with her burning eyes. It was farther away from the intersection than she would’ve guessed.
“That’s two hundred and thirty-five feet away from the intersection. And Kevin Hart, doing sixty-five, ends up here, almost four hundred feet away from the intersection.” Levi clicked another key, and the blue car moved back, quite far, on Lancaster Road. “Now you can’t forget these.” He clicked another button, and round green objects popped up along Lancaster Road.
“What are those?” Faith asked.
“Maple trees. There are—and were—maple trees all along that stretch.”
The accident was on June fourth. The trees would’ve been fully leafed out by then. No doubt about it.
Faith’s heart was suddenly thudding fast and hard. She wiped her palms against her pajama pants and leaned forward, her fatigue forgotten.
Levi looked at her, his brows drawn. “You okay?”
She nodded.
“Good. Now watch this.” He clicked another key, and the cars advanced toward the intersection, stopping just before it. “According to you, your mom never saw him coming, because she was looking at you.”
“Right.”
“But she did see him, Faith. When the chief heard you had a seizure, he just figured she was distracted. He didn’t do the math.”
It was getting hard to breathe. “I—I don’t follow.”
“She couldn’t have seen Kevin Hart until she was almost in the intersection, because he was doing sixty-five, tearing down the road. And the trees blocked her line of sight. But she couldn’t have been looking back at you, because there were skid marks, Faith.” He paused, letting the words sink in. “So she did see him. If she’d been looking at you, she wouldn’t have hit the brakes.”
She never saw it coming. Those words, meant to comfort, had haunted Faith for nineteen and a half years.
Faith stared at the screen. Even here, even with the screen resembling a game more than a fatal car accident, it looked horribly ominous. Her brain couldn’t quite compute what Levi was saying. “I—I don’t understand.”
“She did see him, but it was too late...not because of anything you did or didn’t do, but because the trees blocked her view, and because Kevin was coming so fast.”
He covered her hand with his, and the warmth made her realize how cold she was. “But I remember...I remember her looking at me, not at the road.”
“People’s memories are generally unreliable after an accident. You were looking out the window. You must not have seen her turn back.”
The blood seemed to drain into her knees, and a strange floating sensation enveloped her head. “So you’re saying it wasn’t my fault?”
“Correct.”
How could that be true? Everyone thought she had some role in the accident. Everyone. Her father had told her hundreds of times it wasn’t her fault...but he hadn’t known what really happened.
Levi did.
He was still looking at her, his green eyes patient, waiting.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Yes.”
The news was so enormous, it had to creep slowly into her heart.
Could Levi be right? He just looked at her, solid and patient, a slight frown between his eyes, waiting for the news to register.
“Are you really, really positive?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“So...it wasn’t my fault, and it wasn’t hers, either.”
“That’s right.”
“Really? You’re not saying this just to be nice?”
“I never say anything just to be nice.”
He was telling the truth.
Faith pushed back from the table and turned her back on the laptop and on Levi. Went to the bookcase and grabbed the photo of her family...of her mom. No, no, that was too much. She picked up the little pink rock and closed it in her fist, leaning against the windowsill, looking out over the dark street, the quartz digging hard into her palm.
It was weird, then, because she was crying, tears pouring out of her eyes, but her mind was still reeling, as if she’d been hit in the head. Her chest jerked with squeaky little noises, but she couldn’t quite catch hold of that news.
Levi was there, then, pulling her against his broad, hard chest, wrapping his arms around her, standing behind her like a rock, and just held her close. She brought one of his hands to her lips and kissed it.
She hadn’t killed her mother.
That had to be the truth, because Levi would never, never lie to her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
FAITH COULD CRY for a very long time, Levi noted. He was thinking it might be time for a tranquilizer. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any.
He’d led her across the hall to his place, because, well, frankly, he had no idea what to do with a sobbing woman, and being on his own turf might help him a little. He got a box of tissues and sat her on the couch, where she continued to cry, burying her face in her dog’s neck, sobbing.
Those noises were like shrapnel to the heart, recalling the other time he’d been helpless to comfort her—her wedding day. “Want me to make you something to eat?” he asked, setting down a box of tissues. She shook her head. “A beer? Wine? Whiskey, maybe?”
Another head shake. She grabbed a tissue, blew her nose and kept crying.
Well, hell. He patted her shoulder awkwardly, and she kissed his hand again. Blue put his paw against Levi’s leg and licked his hand as well, then put his muzzle on Faith’s lap.
A bath. Women liked baths, right? A bath it would be. Also, he could get away from the crying for a second, because it made his insides hurt. His bathroom was needlessly enormous, and it did have a pretty amazing bathtub. Last time he’d used it, Blue had been the beneficiary of all those water jets. He turned on the knobs, checked the temp. Went into his sister’s bathroom and found some stuff under the sink—vanilla almond bubble bath, like Faith needed anything to make her smell any more edible—and went back to his bathroom and dumped in about half the bottle. Checked on Faith, who now had a pillow clutched to her stomach.
“Come on, Holland. Bath time.”
She looked up at him, so reminiscent of that little ghost who’d come back to sixth grade, that his heart gave a hard tug.
“Levi,” she began.
“No talking,” he said. He didn’t need to hear it, and she didn’t have to say it.
A half hour later, Faith’s sobs had stopped, though the tears continued to pour out, almost like she didn’t notice, starring her eyelashes. Even so, she looked like an old-school Playboy bunny, albeit a very sad one, her hair piled sloppily on her head, bubbles up to her neck. She’d accepted the glass of wine he’d pressed into her hand and was putting a fair dent in it. Her dog sat with his chin on the edge of the tub, slightly wary either of his beloved’s mood or the memory of his own stint in this tub.
Levi sat on a little footstool, watching her. Those tears made him want to beat someone up. He wanted to drive to the Holland house, pound on the door and grab John by his shirt and shake him. How could she have thought this accident was her fault all these years? What kind of father lets his twelve-year-old think that she in any way was responsible for a fatal car accident? How could he miss the fact that she felt that way? Didn’t anyone talk to her? How could she have kept that in for so damn long? Walking around, thinking of yourself as the reason your mother died, carrying that kind of guilt from the age of twelve on... It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair.
He handed her another tissue. This was his job of the night, apparently. She blew her nose, then gave him a bleary smile.
“You’ve been really great tonight, Levi.” Her voice wobbled.
“Good.” He paused. “Truth is, I have no idea what the hell to do here.”
For some reason, this caused a smile, followed by a fresh stream of tears. “Well, you’ve been wonderful. I’ll never be able to thank you for what you did.” Her face creased like she was about to start sobbing again, but instead, she rallied and took another swallow of wine.