B0160A5OPY (A) (7 page)

“Luke
Naughton
.”

It’s clear this is supposed to mean something to me, but it doesn’t. I stare uncomprehendingly back at him.

“Brother of Andrew Naughton.” His voice is bitter with cold fury.

My scalp creeps back over my head. Something dreadful is happening.

“Ah, rings a bell, does it?”

“Ohhh.” I realize who he is. “Oh!”

I understand everything now, understand him. It feels like someone pulled a plug on the bottom of my feet; I can feel the blood draining from my face, my knees giving way. I need to sit, to get out of the range of those accusing, icy eyes.

“Oh …” the last of my breath escapes on the soft syllable.

What a fool I’ve been to hope, to dream, when my life has taught me so brutally that the good stuff’s not for me. And him! How must he have felt these last weeks, trapped in a classroom, on a project, with me – living, breathing, walking, talking me? Constantly faced with my scar – the revolting reminder of what he has lost.

“I … I …”

I don’t know what to say. I sag onto the sofa, bury my face in my hands, mumble, “I didn’t know, Luke. I never knew who you were, that you were at this school. I would never have –”

I’m interrupted by a snort. I look up to see his retreating back. He stalks out of the room, wrenches the front door open so hard it bangs against the wall, then slams it shut behind him.

There’s an ache in my chest, an actual physical heart-ache, as I sit in the sudden silence, staring at the closed door in front of me.

And then it all surges upwards, all the memories I’ve been holding back and pressing down and trying to breathe away. And it’s enough to drown me.

15

A fierce cold burn

I was sixteen years old the day I got the scar, and everything changed.

Where I live, west of Chicago, it’s hot and humid in the summer. Heat hazes shimmer in the distance and the roads steam when thunderstorms rip through the city and suburbs, lashing the trees, hurling fat raindrops down and sizzling the air with cracks of lightning. You can smell the storms coming. There’s a trace of ozone in the air, like the promise of love – sweet and exhilarating and dangerous. When the afternoon light turns lime, a bad one is on the way. After the world has been sluiced clean and threatened with destruction, the sun blazes again. Winters start cold and then get colder. When the sun shines, it does so with pallid weakness and it retreats like a coward to the coming of snow.

That day –
the
day – was just another cold November school morning. It began ordinarily enough: mom nagging me awake with threats that I’d be late, the mad scramble to shower, dress and pack my bag. I was still chewing on a breakfast bar as I climbed into the car, tossing my bags into the tiny rear seat. The lack of room for friends at the back was only one of the things I hated about mom’s “new” car – a 1969 Aston Martin DB6 Vantage – which had been her fortieth birthday present to herself. I also disliked the right-hand drive, the noisy engine, the tiny trunk and the fact that it was stick-shift. But mom loved the sleek silver styling, the wooden steering wheel, the luscious red leather interior and the powerful six-cylinder engine. She said the classic coupe made her feel like James Bond. I said it made her drive like him, too.

Mom swore under her breath as we belted up.

“We’re late already, and we still have to stop on the way to get the painting.”

“What painting?”

“The painting for the office. We’ve had one of the boardroom paintings reframed and I want it up on the wall in time for this morning’s partners’ meeting.”

“Does it have to be you who picks it up? Can’t you send some assistant to get it?” I mean, what’s the point of being a senior partner in a law firm if you can’t get flunkies to do your bidding?

“It’s on our way, Sloane. Besides, I want to check that –”

“– that it’s perfect!” I completed the sentence for her.

“Am I so predictable?” Mom smiled at me.

“Just a little.” I grinned back.

The rain was falling more heavily now, slowing down the morning traffic and stressing my mother even more. The weatherman had predicted snow before the weekend.

“Chill, mom,” I said, and pulled out my cell phone to check on my messages and mail.

“I hate to be late,” said my mother, and stretched out a hand automatically to reach into her handbag as the shrill ring of her phone sounded.

“Mom, don’t.” I hated it when my mother used the phone while driving.

“Lana Munster,” she answered, pulling a face at me. “… Yes, I’m on my way in … Of course, I have the contracts … As soon as I can, okay? I should be another …” she cradled the phone between her jaw and shoulder so that she could glance at her wristwatch, and took her other hand off the wheel to turn down the radio as we took off from the traffic lights. And they say teenagers are bad drivers!

“… another thirty minutes, just need to get the painting and drop Sloane off … I’ll
be
there, okay? Bye.”

She ended the call with her thumb and tossed the phone into her bag, glaring at the traffic in front of her and trying to find a gap to get into the lane closest to the sidewalk. The wipers swished clear streaks across the windshield, and the headlights shone shafts of light into the glittering downpour.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that, mom. You know it’s dangerous.”

They had shown us a video, in driver’s ed., showing how distracted cellphone users were. Worse than driving drunk, the instructor said.

“Oh, lighten up, Sloane! You’re sixteen, not sixty. Who’s the mother around here?” She flipped her scarf – a bright stream of coral and crimson and butter-yellow – over her shoulder.

“Right, the framing store’s coming up – look for a parking spot … There!”

She pulled over and into a diagonal space near a store with the name “Frame of Mind” in gold lettering on the front window. It still looked dark inside the store.

“Are they even open yet?”

“For me – naturally!” said my mother.

She was out of the car and in the store moments later. My mother had to do everything at speed. I guess it was part of the drive and determination that had fuelled her career success. Well, that and the awareness that as a single parent, all the responsibility for providing for us was on her shoulders. I tried to remember this when I got irritated by her inability ever to switch off from work, to ignore the phone, to relax and spend time with me.

I checked my make-up in the visor mirror, then fiddled with the radio – one of the few things that had been updated in the car – and found a song I liked: “Give me Love” by Ed Sheeran. I had just closed my eyes to enjoy the music when there was a hammering at my window. Mom was there, holding a large painting and gesturing to me to open my door. When I did, she thrust the painting onto my lap and then ran around to her side of the car.

“Why do I have to hold it? Why can’t it go on the back seat?” I whined.

“Because it might fall and break the glass. Just hold it tight, will you?” Mom started the engine and backed up at speed out of the parking space. Behind us a car horn honked in protest.

“And wipe the rain off it,” said Mom, reaching her arm over to brush the droplets of water off the glass and pale wood frame with her sleeve. I shoved her arm away.

“Both hands on the wheel, Mom, focus!” I said. “And buckle up already.”

“Let me just get into the stream of traffic here. You okay, there?”

“I’ve been more comfortable.”

The painting was big and bulky. It pressed heavily into my thighs and obscured my portion of the windshield. I tried to maneuver it flat, so that it would lie more comfortably on my lap. I could only manage to rest it on a slant between my stomach and the dashboard, but I could at least see where we were going. I was glad the rain was lightening up, because when my hair got damp, it got frizzy. The frame of the painting was poking into my stomach and I shifted it a little. Now my midriff was pushed up against it. I looked down at the picture critically, pulling a face at the boring, empty landscape, painted in dull olives and browns, devoid of any humans or animals.

“This will brighten up your boardroom no end,” I said. “I can see why it was so important to get it reframed and on the wall. A real cheerful conversation piece, this is.” Before she could interrupt and tell me it was very valuable and tasteful, I continued, “Listen, Mom, there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now. No time like the present – isn’t that what you’re always saying? Are you listening?”

“I always listen, Sloane.”

I rolled my eyes. She always listened to several things at once, heard maybe half of them.

“I wanted to ask you for –” I began, but my mother’s phone was summoning her again; this time it was the double-tone that indicated an incoming text message. Her hand dipped again into her bag and fished out the phone. She pressed a button automatically, looked down to read the message.

We were coming up to an intersection where the traffic lights shone in shimmering amber pools on the rain-wet road. Out of habit I scanned the road ahead. And saw several things at once. Traffic lights turning red, cars in the lanes adjacent to us stopping, two kids in school uniforms starting to run across the road in front of us.

I wanted to yell, “Mom, lookout! Stop! It’s red. There’s someone in front. Stop!” but all I got out was “Mah!”

In the same instant, I reached out my hand and grabbed the steering wheel, yanking down hard. The car slewed to the side – just avoided hitting the two little girls. In my peripheral vision, I saw the smaller one stumble forward. The car had just nudged the bag on her back, but they were safe. We had missed them. In the fraction of a second it took to register this fact, the car travelled into the intersection. I guess Mom must have slammed her foot on the brake, I don’t know, but we were still moving. I looked up into the wide, round eyes of the driver in the blue car now crossing directly in front of us in the intersection.

There was a deafening, shuddering bang.

And then nothing.

When I opened my eyes, it felt like that bang was still reverberating in my chest. There was a thudding and a pulsing deep inside. My heart? My head felt too heavy to move it from where it rested on my chest. As I lifted it, something slid off my head and fell. I looked down. Lying in the puddle of glass fragments which filled my lap was the remains of the painting – all splintered ends of snapped wooden frame and torn folds of warped canvas. Some long, sharp shards of glass still clung to the edges of the frame, reaching up into the air like crystal stalagmites, and red paint trickled down from one corner across the painting. Why had they framed it when the paint was still wet?

My hands and arms were covered with a layer of rough, round beads of glass; they rolled off when I lifted my arms. Rain was blowing into the car now. I could feel it on my face. It was raining in the car? That would ruin the painting. Mom would not be pleased.

Mom.

There was a moment of realization, a beat, then my heart gave a hard kick and I seemed to come awake.

“Mom!”

I turned to check on her. There was no-one in the seat next to me. An icy swoop turned my stomach cold, colder than the rain blowing in my face as I looked from the empty seat to where the windshield ought to be. A web of crumpled glass hung from the buckled frame, but the part above the steering wheel had been thrust out over the hood of the car.

I shoved the painting aside. It fell into the foot-well, onto the brake and gas pedal, and alongside a cellphone whose screen was still glowing. A part of my mind registered that the screen-saver had not yet had time to kick in. It could only have been seconds since the text came in.

I fumbled to release the catch of the seatbelt; it shook in my hands. I had to get out. My door wouldn’t open. I pushed and shoved, checked it was not locked, shoved again.
Must get out!
I pulled back, then, holding the handle open, bashed against the door with my shoulder. It hurt – a sharp pain to join the other pains which I was only now aware of feeling. I felt it as though from a distance, as though I could feel what was happening in someone else’s body, as though I weren’t in my own.

I couldn’t think clearly. My mind was in my throat, where a single word was stuck, unable to force its way past the noose of fear that strangled me. It shrieked inside me. “Mom! Mom! Mom-mom-mom-mom!”

Someone – a woman – was at the door, pulling it open for me, helping me climb out, asking me something. I tried to stand up and crumpled to the ground. There was something wrong with my knee – it would not straighten, would not hold me up. I looked around from where I half-sat, half-lay on the road. The rain was still coming down as it had before, as if nothing had happened, as if the world had not just careened to a stop. Smoke, or perhaps it was steam, was rising in a cloud from under the arched hood of our car. The other car, a twisted mangle of blue, had spun off to one side but my eyes were riveted at once to a flash of sunset colors, part of a crumpled heap lying impossibly far away from our car. Leaning on the woman, I hobbled across the rough, wet surface of the road, towards that blaze of crimson and orange.

There’s a gap, an absence in my memory here. And then I am back inside the moment but outside of myself, looking dispassionately from a little way away as that girl who is also me sits on the road, with my mother’s head in her lap, paying no attention to the people who are milling all around. My mother’s eyes are open, but dull. There is an absence in them, too. And the me outside of me knows that she is gone, knows that the flattening on the side of her head must constitute a fatal injury. There is no point in trying CPR, my logical mind deduces. Instead, I should get up, go and check the other car – surely that driver needs help. I must call 911, phone my mother’s office and let them know she will not be in today.

But even as these thoughts race through my mind, the other part of me – the part inside my bowed body – hangs onto my mother, tries to shake a light into her staring eyes, cradles her head between my hands as the scream finally breaks through my tight throat.