Rom-Com Collection

“Mommy, get me out!” she called, trying to pull herself from the mess of the car, tugging on her seat belt strap.

“Don’t worry, sweetie,” her mother said. “You’re fine. I love you!”

Then she blew Faith a kiss. Why was she so happy when they’d just been in an accident? Faith looked back at the hair in the front seat.

It was still there.

When she looked out the windshield again, the field was empty, and Faith understood in a sudden, wrenching tear.

Her mother was dead.

“Mommy,” she cried, her voice so thin and ruined. “Oh, Mommy, I’m sorry.”

She stopped trying to get out.

No one came to help. For a very long time, the only sound was the birds and the wind. Horribly, the clock on the dashboard still worked, so Faith was all too aware of the time that passed. Fifty-two minutes before someone called out, “Are you okay? Hello? Can you hear me?” She wasn’t able to answer, because then she’d have to give the news that Mommy had died. Sixty-three minutes before she heard sirens in the distance. Sixty-eight minutes before Mr. Stoakes from the candy store appeared in the windshield, strange in his firefighter clothes, and said, “Oh, God, no. Oh, no,” before he saw Faith looking at him.

Seventy-four minutes when they started cutting with the noisy tools, yelling reassuringly to her, their faces telling the true story.

A hundred and fifteen minutes before they lifted Faith out.

Two hours with her mother’s body, two hours spent shivering and sobbing, fading in and out of shock. Two hours of whispering how sorry she was.

When she saw her father’s face at the hospital, when she saw how old he’d become since morning, when he’d held her bruised hand, she told him she’d had a seizure and didn’t remember anything.

Better for him to think that than to know his daughter was a murderer.

* * *

THREE O’CLOCK IN THE morning. The loneliest time, even with an eighty pound Golden retriever taking up two-thirds of the bed.

Since telling Levi, a strange, heavy fog seemed to be pressing on Faith’s brain. For twenty years, she’d tried to avoid indulging in memories of her mother, feeling almost like she didn’t deserve them. But tonight, images of her mother, good and bad, flickered through her brain like a faulty movie—Mom in the kitchen, ferociously scrubbing the sink after dinner, mad at someone. At bath time, when Faith was really small, laughing as she draped the face cloth on Faith’s head. Chastising her over a teacher’s comment about Faith being inattentive in class. Clapping for her as she rode her bike around the giant tree in the front yard for the first time. Sitting on the couch, reading to Honor, even though Honor could read by herself. Crying as she folded Jack’s laundry before he left for college. Holding baby Ned in the hospital after he was born, her eyes so shiny as she smiled at Pru.

Kissing Dad in the back hall, then laughing, telling him he needed a shower.

Had Mom really been so unhappy? Had she really viewed her life as a mistake, filled with regret and bitterness?

It never seemed that way.

Suddenly, Blue leaped off the bed and raced out of the room. She heard his toenails clicking on the floor, then his bark. Feeling old and weary, Faith pushed the covers back and got out of bed.

A quiet knock came at the door.

It was Levi. “Got a second?” he asked, as if it wasn’t the middle of the night.

She looked at him a long minute, then held the door open. He had a file and a laptop, but her brain felt too heavy to ask why.

“Have a seat,” he said, turning on the light that hung over the table, making her squint.

She sat. “Would you like coffee or anything?” she asked, her voice odd to her own ears.

“No, thank you.” How oddly formal they were being. He sat down, too, and put the folder on the table, then tapped it, looking at her solemnly. “This is your mother’s accident report. It was in the storage place out on Route 54. Took me a little while to find it.”

She glanced at it. “I don’t...I don’t want to look at that, Levi.”

“You might.” He looked at her, then ran his hand through his hair, frowning.

Blue put his head in her lap and wagged, and she petted his beautiful head, not looking at Levi.

“When you said you were responsible...why did you think that? The guy who hit you, Kevin Hart. He ran the stop sign. So why was the accident your fault?”

She looked at him, oddly wary. His gaze was steady, that slight frown creasing his forehead. “Because,” she said, “my mother would’ve seen him coming if she hadn’t been looking at me, and she could’ve stopped or swerved.”

Mom would’ve swerved into the field, where the cows chewed so placidly. Constance would’ve cursed at the damage to the minivan, and by supper, it would’ve become a great story, and Faith could have told her part, about bouncing over the field, the cows scattering and mooing, and everyone would have laughed and patted her hand and not expected her to do anything for cleanup, because she’d had a scare, even though everything had turned out just fine.

It was a scenario she’d pictured ten thousand times. She had a dozen others that ended about the same way.

Levi nodded. “That’s what I figured you thought. And it’s a logical assumption.” He paused. “You remember Chief Griggs?”

“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?”