Rom-Com Collection

“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.