“Jesus.”
“She’d been agonizing over this for weeks.”
“So what did you tell her?” Webster asks.
“That I felt bad for her. I knew that Ruth, sitting right up front as mother of the bride, would have a fit if Annabelle backed out at that late stage. But I told Annabelle that all I had to do was put the car in gear, and we would drive away, and I would go back and explain it to Jackson and Ruth and the guests. I put the car in gear and went about ten feet before she begged me to stop. I finally said she either had to get out of the car or let me drive on. She fixed herself up as best she could, and then I took her into the inn. It felt like I was leading her to the slaughter.”
“Hey, I’m sorry,” Webster says as he makes the turn in to Rescue.
“She seemed happy enough at the reception, so maybe it was mostly nerves. That’s what I’m hoping, anyway. She’s going to have a lot of time over the next year to wonder if she did the right thing.”
“She’d be better off not to think about it at all,” Webster says. “She can’t undo it while he’s in Afghanistan.”
Webster drags himself from the cruiser and through his own back door. Twelve thirty a.m., the end of one of the longest and worst days on the job he’s had in ages. A shift and a half. Rowan is sitting at the kitchen table with leftovers waiting to be put in the microwave.
“You’re still up?” Webster asks, surprised. “You cooked?”
“Just stew. You look tired.”
“Rough day.”
“I heard about the pileup. What was it like?”
Webster has always answered Rowan’s questions about emergent care and its aftermath. Lately, he’s been hiding nothing, even the gruesome deaths. “A horror show. Four dead, three of them kids. I worked on a girl who was stuck under a bench on a bus. Head injury, I think, though I hope not. She can’t have been more than fifteen.”
“How did the adult die?”
“Crushed, in her Hyundai.”
Rowan is silent at this news. Does she try to picture it?
Webster peels off his jacket. He wants to take everything off right then and there and carry it to the washing machine. All deaths still make him feel slimy.
“It’s great what you do,” Rowan says, looking up at her father.
She’s waited up all night to tell him that.
“Thank you,” he says. “That makes it all worthwhile.”
“Good,” she says, standing.
“You’d better get to bed. You have to get up for school in six hours.”
“I took a nap.”
Webster watches his tired child climb the stairs.
Reparations. For the fuck? For shooting the leaves and flowers?
In the afternoon, after his nap, Webster is working in his newly dug garden. He hears the squeak of the back door and glances up. For a second, not even a second, he thinks it’s Sheila. Not as she might be now, but as she was then: the long brown hair, the slightly defiant posture, the gray sweater and jeans, the sunglasses back on her head, even the dress boots. But it isn’t Sheila—it’s his daughter looking about two years older than she did the last time he saw her.
He meets her in the driveway.
“Where are you going?” he asks. He wipes his hands on his old jeans. He has on a short-sleeved maroon T-shirt that reads HART-STONE MARAUDERS.
“Out,” she says.
“Rowan?”
“I’m meeting Tommy at the mall. We’re going shopping for his mother’s birthday and then we’re going to the talent show at the high school. There might be a party after that.”
“What party?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You know I don’t like that.”
“I’ll call you when I get there.”
Both know a cell phone call is only slightly better than meaningless. If she wanted to, she could easily lie about her whereabouts. Would she lie to him?
“You have gas in your car?” he asks her.
“Enough.”
She lifts her head and tosses her hair, a gesture he hardly ever sees her make. Webster doesn’t want Rowan to go, but there’s nothing he can do.
He aches to put his arms around her. Three months ago, he would have done it. He worries about car trouble, about her getting lost, about predators. But he can feel the shield she’s put up against him.
“So,” she says.
He wants to say, Don’t drink.
He watches his daughter slide into the Corolla. He knows he’s making her nervous. He ought to move away, go back into the garden, but he feels as though he has to see her out of the driveway. It’s an old habit, impossible to break. He’s watched her leave in the backseat of a girlfriend’s mother’s van, and driving away after she got her license. The old impulses just don’t go away.
She backs the car around, slides her sunglasses forward, adjusts her hair, and heads down the driveway. He watches until she makes the turn onto 42.
He likes the feel of the earth, the smell of it, the mounded rows of seedlings. He’s already harvested lettuces, and the peas should pop soon. He has a lot of weeding to do tomorrow, the tomatoes to put in. The day before, he worked on the fence, securing it against deer, though he’s heard from others that a vegetable garden in Vermont is a crapshoot. Koenig’s wife, Ruth, said that last year the deer ate all the pink and blue flowers she’d put in. They left the rest alone. Webster has planted marigolds all around the inside border of the fence. It’s supposed to work with small pests. Already he has bigger pests, the tunnels in the lawn suggesting moles. Squishy places where the foot sinks in. He supposes it’s just a matter of time before the critters reach the garden.
He pictures Rowan on the road. Does she drive with only one hand? Does she text while she drives?
By the time she heads for college, he’ll have had her for eighteen years. Maybe that’s all he’ll get. He has to be ready to settle for that. Sheila had only two.
He squats, digs the spade deep into the black dirt, and rests the heel of his hand against the wooden end. He wants to lie down. He wants to let the worry sink into the dirt.
When he gets home after his shift, Webster can smell the alcohol as soon as he enters the kitchen. He takes the stairs two at a time and yanks himself into Rowan’s room by the doorjamb. She’s not there. He can’t tell if she’s slept in her bed or not. After nearly falling down the stairs to get to the living room, he finds Rowan on the couch wrapped in a summer quilt.
“Rowan!” he yells, standing over her. The reek of alcohol is strong and so is something else. He glances at the carpet and sees a dried stain of vomit.
Jesus Christ.
He shakes her and gets a moan.
Shit, he thinks. Is his daughter having a blackout?
He shakes her again and says her name. She opens her eyes and focuses. He sees the moment of panic. Conscious and alert.
“What the hell?” he says to her.
Rowan moans. “I don’t feel good,” she says.
“How much did you have to drink?”
There’s a slight movement under the blankets. Rowan’s hand going to her stomach. “I don’t know.”
“Did Tommy do this to you?” Webster demands, his blood pressure soaring.
“No,” Rowan says. “He was getting pissed at me.”
“Did he drive you home?”
“Oh, God, Dad, why are you doing this?”
“I’ll do a hell of a lot more if you don’t answer my questions!”
“Tommy got me into his car,” Rowan says. “He was sober. I don’t remember anything after that.”
“Jesus Christ, Rowan. Why?”
“Why what?”
“What the hell happened to you?”
She coughs, and he thinks she’s going to throw up again. Was she in such bad shape earlier that she couldn’t even make it to a toilet or grab a pan from the kitchen?
“I don’t know,” she says weakly. “I guess it runs in the family.”
Webster roughly pulls her to a sitting position. Her head bobbles. Her skin is green. Just looking at her nauseates him. “You listen to me,” he says to his daughter. “This I will not tolerate. There’s nothing alcoholic about you, so don’t goddamn use that as an excuse. You did this to yourself. I don’t know what game you’re playing here, but you’d better knock it off.” When Webster lets her go, she slumps back onto the couch. She turns her head away.
When Rowan was twelve, Webster told her that her mother had been an alcoholic and that was why she had to go away and get help. He never dreamed that his daughter would see this as her legacy. He’s pretty much told Rowan everything that’s fit for an adolescent girl’s ears about Sheila and him, but he’s withheld one important fact. He hasn’t told her that it was he who sent her mother away. He should have done it years ago.
Webster rakes his scalp with his fingernails. Shit. There’s nothing he can say to his daughter now. For all he knows, she might not even remember this conversation.
She isn’t so sick that she needs to go to the emergency room. He’ll just have to wait until she’s slept it off. She’s already on her side, so that’s OK. He’ll wake her up every half hour for another two hours. He hopes she’ll have a pounding headache.
He falls into a chair across from her. Sleep will be impossible now. As his eyes adjust more and more to the gloom, he can see that there are two stains on the carpet. He heaves himself out of the chair and finds a bucket and a rag from the kitchen. He should have Rowan clean it up in the morning, but he doesn’t know if he can tolerate the smell. The more he scrubs and rinses, the more infuriated he becomes. If his blood pressure keeps rising, he’ll have a heart attack. He thinks of getting out his cuff. He can’t remember the last time he was so angry with his daughter. Maybe never.
She can’t remember the drive home. And Tommy? He’ll ream that kid out the first chance he gets. Tommy her boyfriend? Jesus Christ. Who would sit by and watch his girlfriend get shitfaced unless he had ulterior motives? Webster shakes his head. He can’t go there.
When Webster is done with the cleaning, he washes his hands, makes himself a cup of coffee, and sits again in the chair opposite the couch. Being angry with someone he loves brings on a sick feeling inside his chest. Too close to the bone. Memories he doesn’t want rise up to meet him. Sheila drunk with the baby in her arms. Sheila at Rowan’s birthday party. The image of Sheila weaving on Route 222. He will not, will not, let that become Rowan.
When he wakes, there are streaks of light around the shades. Something else, too, a knocking at the door. What time is it? He checks his watch. Almost eight a.m.
When he peers through the glass of the kitchen door, he opens it fast and closes it again behind him. He’s so rough with his movements that Gina takes two quick steps backward. Tommy stands to one side.
“I’d like to know what you have to say for yourselves,” Webster barks at the pair. For an instant, Webster remembers the Tommy he once liked. Six three, maybe six four. A dark hairline going straight across a high forehead, full lips, a nice smile. The first time he met the boy, Tommy came to the door to pick Rowan up, his car not much better than hers. Rowan, employing manners she’d never needed before, came to get Webster to introduce them. She warned Webster ahead of time, and because he was surprised and pleased for Rowan that she had a date, he didn’t ask a lot of questions. “Be home by midnight?”
Rowan didn’t answer, but Tommy did. “Will do.”
Webster liked the kid straight up. Shy, but giving it his all. Honest face. Dark eyes that didn’t slide away when they met Webster’s. Good handshake. Not trying to prove anything. And the way he looked at Rowan. She’d said something funny—what was it?—and the kid laughed and gazed at her in a way that told Webster everything he needed to know. That’s all you could hope for, really.
But now? Webster feels betrayed.
“It wasn’t Tommy’s fault,” Gina says.
“Then you explain to me,” Webster says, pointing back and forth to each, “how a girl can get so drunk, with friends who care for her just sitting by and watching. Was it funny? Did you get a kick out of it?”
Tommy puts his hands up. “Mr. Webster, I should have been there, but I wasn’t. We went to the party together, but we both knew I would have to leave at some point to go home to see my grandmother, who just came from Indiana. When I got back to the party, I found Rowan stumbling around.”
“How long were you gone?” Webster asks.
“An hour maybe?”
“She got that drunk in an hour? And where were you?” he asks, looking at Gina.
“I wasn’t there,” she says. “I never went to the party. But I heard that when Tommy left, she went for the vodka in a big way. I’m so sorry. I wish I’d been there. I would have stopped her.”
“Some class of friends you hang out with,” Webster says.
“How is she?” Gina asks.
Webster opens the door and cocks his head in the direction of the living room. Gina slips around Webster and heads for Rowan.
“She’s right where you left her,” he says to Tommy as the kid enters the kitchen. “You’re the one who brought her home?”
Tommy nods. “I was the designated driver all night.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“I don’t know,” the boy says, flustered. “I knew you were on duty.”
“You think I wouldn’t come home to take care of my daughter?” Webster asks. “And why did you leave her here alone?”
“I had to go home,” Tommy, stricken, says. “My parents insisted I be home early.”
“You realize she could have died,” Webster points out. “She vomited twice. Thank God she had enough sense to puke over the side of the couch. Never leave someone in that position.”
Tommy lowers his head. He looks as though he might be sick, too.
“It’s not your fault,” Webster says, relenting and putting a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “It’s entirely Rowan’s fault. I should be thankful you got her out of there.”
When they reach the living room, Gina is already kneeling on the floor in front of the couch, murmuring to Rowan, who seems awake enough to listen.
Tommy stands awkwardly behind the couch. Entitled to be there, but not.
Webster paces.
“Where’s Tommy?” he hears his daughter ask.
He watches as Tommy puts a hand on Rowan’s shoulder. She reaches up from the covers to hold it. It’s a simple gesture, but it means something. The boy held his ground against Webster’s roaring. Backbone there. Restraint as well. Webster might have provoked another boy to be defensive. He takes another deep breath. He has to calm down.
The late morning light is garish. Rowan shades her eyes and begins to cry. Webster leaves the three of them and crawls upstairs to his bed, trailing unwanted memories behind him.
While he sleeps, he dreams of Sheila.
A cop meets them in front of the warehouse. “Jumper down,” he says.
“Really?” Webster asks. “I couldn’t believe it when the call came in. Has anyone ever had a jumper down?”
“Not in my memory,” the cop says. “Quechee Gorge maybe.” He motions toward the back of the building.
Koenig has the backboard, the trauma bag, his jump kit. Webster carries the rest. They set out on a run. A clot of cops stands around a limp patient. They move out of the way when they see Webster and Koenig coming.
“He’s conscious. He’s talking,” one of the cops says.
A security light illuminates the scene: surreal, metallic, framed in black. The patient has fallen onto his back. His left knee is bent backward in an unnatural way. A bone is sticking through his skin. A new cop to the scene says, “Oh Jesus,” and turns away.
Webster glances up. Two stories. Maybe you could kill yourself falling two stories.
“The guy in front, security, actually heard the thud,” the first cop adds. “Ran around back here to see what was going on.”
br /> Webster squats next to the patient and applies the c-collar. “We’ll have to splint that,” he says to Koenig, pointing to the fracture.
“ETOH,” Koenig says, sniffing. He wraps a blood pressure cuff around the man’s arm.
“Sir, can you tell me your name?” Webster asks.
Why isn’t the guy screaming? Even though it’s late May, he has a multicolored cap on his head, as if knit by a grandmother, blood pooling under it. Webster applies a pressure bandage. The man has on a denim jacket and jeans, one boot. The guy should be yelling his head off with pain.
“Randall,” the man says.
“OK, Randall, can you tell me where you’re hurt?”
“My back. Knocked the wind outta me, I guess.”
“Your head hurt?”
“Not too bad.”
Webster stabilizes the head. Head wounds bleed profusely. It’s not as bad as it looks. He checks the pulse in the guy’s ankles.
“How old are you, Randall?”
“Thirty-four.”
Koenig glances at Webster. The guy looks to be in his late fifties, if a day. Hard living.
“Randall, were you pushed or did you jump?’
“I guess I jumped.”
“Can you feel either your right or your left leg?” Webster asks.
The man tries to look up. The exertion seems to tire him, and he lies back.
“BP one hundred twelve over sixty-eight,” Koenig reports. “Pulse thready and weak. Respirations twenty-four. Breath sounds equal and bilateral.”
“You got the warming blanket with you?”
Koenig takes the shiny blanket out of the trauma box and covers the man up to his chest.
“Lumbar fracture?” Webster asks Koenig.
“Think so.”
Webster can overhear the cops talking behind him. “Who would try to kill himself by jumping off a two-story building?” one of them asks, and another starts laughing.
“Call it in,” Webster says to Koenig. “Tell them we got a jumper, possible L-1, compound tib-fib fracture, knee dislocation, bleeding profusely from the back of the head. ETOH. Conscious and talking.”
“I want full-body immobilization,” Webster says. “Bring the rig around,” he tells one of the many cops who have gathered just to see the novel scene. Webster tosses him the keys. “Make it quick,” Webster says.