Night Road (22 page)

Jude turned to her. “She
always
wore her seatbelt.” She drew in a shaking breath and reached over into the nightstand for tissues.

A mistake; she saw that instantly.

Inside the drawer, she saw a small blue velvet ring box sitting beside a pair of Costco reading glasses. Knowing she shouldn’t touch it, she took it out, flipped it open.

“What’s that?” Molly asked.

“Mia’s graduation present.”

Molly was silent for a moment. “It’s beautiful.”

“I was going to take her shopping with me for the stone. A girls’ day. Maybe a mani-pedi when we were done.” On that, Jude’s resolve cracked, and she started to cry.

“Oh, Jude,” Molly said, hugging her again.

Jude should have felt enveloped by her friend’s love, but she couldn’t feel anything at all. Not then, as she stared down at this beautiful, unfinished ring with gaping, empty prongs …

Fifteen

The high school parking lot was full of cars on this sunny Saturday afternoon.

Lexi sat in the passenger seat of her aunt’s Ford Fairlane, staring through the grimy windshield at the crowd gathered around the flagpole.

“You belong here, Alexa,” her aunt said. “You’ve worked as hard for this day as anyone else.”

“I’m afraid,” she said quietly.

“I know,” her aunt said. “That’s why I’m here.”

Lexi took a deep breath and reached for the door handle. The old door creaked open, popping at the end of its arc.

She and Eva walked through the chattering crowd of family and friends who had come to see the class of 2004 graduate. Lexi kept her head down, not making eye contact with the reporters at the flagpole. As she passed them, she heard one of them say, “Two hundred and seventy-two seniors, Phil. It should have been two hundred and seventy-three.”

At the edge of the football field, Lexi paused.

“You better hurry,” Eva said. “We’re late.”

Lexi nodded, but as she looked at the rows of folding chairs set up on the green football field, she felt sick to her stomach.

“I’m proud of you, Alexa,” her aunt said. “You’re a good girl. And don’t you dare think otherwise.”

Eva gave her a bright smile and then disappeared into the crowd of proud parents streaming up into the bleachers.

Lexi saw the Farradays up there. Jude and Miles were seated in the second row, with Molly and Tim and Grandmother Caroline. Even from here, Lexi could see how pale and thin Jude looked. The black sunglasses she wore accentuated the pallor of her skin and the sharpness of her cheekbones. She had no lipstick on, and she was carrying Mia’s pink purse.

Lexi knew then she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t walk through this crowd and go into the gymnasium, where all her friends were dressed in caps and gowns, waiting to walk triumphantly to the seats on the field. She couldn’t see Zach, not on this day, when Mia’s absence would be so keenly felt.

She pulled off her cap and unzipped her gown, stuffing them both in her big patchwork purse. She was about to leave when the class of 2004 filed onto the field, a stream of royal blue and marigold yellow robes against a cloudless sky.

She moved into one of the empty aisles beneath the bleachers. On the field below, her classmates moved into their assigned seats.

Zach was walking alone. In sunglasses (probably to protect his burned eyes in this bright sunlight), with his shaved head and burned jawline, he hardly looked like himself. Like Jude, there was a new hollowness to his face, and he wasn’t smiling.

When the last of the seniors had taken their seats, the audience burst into applause.

Amid the noise, Principal Yates walked onto the stage and stood at the podium. He spoke eloquently about Pine Island and what it was like to grow up on land that was surrounded by water, how it strengthened the sense of community. At the end of his speech, he said, “This is a class that has been touched by a sudden, terrible tragedy, and these students who were on their way to adulthood have grown up in the past week. We hope as they move forward and are faced with choices in their lives, both big and small, they will remember what they learned about consequences in the year 2004.” He gave the class a sad, knowing smile. “And now, Amanda Martin is going to sing a song in memory of a very special girl, who should have been with us today.”

Lexi tried to steel herself, but when the music began, she felt a terrible ache in her chest. And then Amanda’s voice, pure and sweet, rang out: “
I can show you the world … shining, shimmering, splendid…”

The song brought Mia bursting back to life, twirling on the dance floor, singing off-key. She’d loved the Disney movies so much.
I’m Ariel,
she used to say all the time.
You’re Belle
.
No Snow White or Cinderella, not for us; we’re the new-school Disney girls … we go for what we want …

Lexi wasn’t the only one sobbing when Amanda finished her song. At least half of the senior class was crying.

The applause was thunderous, and when it faded once again, the commencement began. One by one, her friends’ names were called, and blue-robed girls and boys bounded onto the stage to take their diplomas and wave to the crowd.

“Alexa Baill.”

The audience stilled. People looked around.

Onstage, the principal cleared his throat and went on. “Andrew Clark…”

Lexi’s heart pounded. She was sure someone would point to her, yell, “There she is; there’s the girl who killed Mia.”

“Zachary Farraday.”

Zach walked woodenly up the aisle and onto the stage. He took his diploma from the principal and faced the bleachers. Slowly, he upheld a framed photograph of Mia and then leaned closer to the microphone. “She wanted to do a cartwheel today…”

A cartwheel, Lexster … that would get their attention
.

Lexi sagged back against the sun-warmed concrete wall, closing her eyes. The ceremony went on, calling names and handing out diplomas, but she hardly noticed. All she could hear were memories, things Mia had said to her over the years …

“Lex?”

She drew in a sharp breath and opened her eyes to see Zach standing in front of her. Behind them, down on the field, there was sound and color and movement, but here it was quiet and still. They were alone in an alcove beneath the bleachers. “H-how did you find me?”

“I knew you’d be here.”

She’d hoped for this moment, dreamed of it, thought of ways to make him understand how sorry she was, but she could see that he knew, that he understood. “I love you,” she said softly. It was the only thing that hadn’t changed.

“I love you, too, but…”

“But what?”

He shook his head, shrugged. She understood the gesture perfectly: it meant that nothing mattered anymore, their love least of all. His look was the saddest thing she’d ever seen.

“You’ll never forgive me, will you?” she said.

“It’s me I can’t forgive,” he said, and on that, his voice broke and he turned away from her. “I gotta go.”

“Wait.” She reached into her purse, burrowed past the polyester of her gown, and pulled out her worn, dog-eared copy of
Jane Eyre
. It was a stupid gift for a girl to give a boy, but it was all she had that mattered to her. “I want you to have this,” she said.

“It’s your favorite book. I can’t take—”

“Please. It has a happy ending.”

He reached out; for a second, they were both touching the book. “I gotta go.”

“I know. Good-bye, Zach,” she whispered, watching him walk away from her.

She pulled away from the wall and walked out beneath the bleachers. She didn’t bother to hunch her shoulders or avert her eyes. She didn’t care if people stared at her.

In the parking lot, she climbed into Eva’s old car and waited.

“Couldn’t do it, huh?” Eva said later, when she got behind the wheel.

Lexi shrugged. “Who cares? It’s just a dumb ceremony.”

“You cared.”

“Before,” Lexi said, realizing as she said it that her whole life would now be divided into two parts: before she’d killed her best friend, and after.

*

Graduation was more than Jude could handle. The day had been full of ghosts, missing faces, the wrong girls …

By the time the ceremony finally ended, she felt like crumbling into a heap. She’d tried to convince Zach to go to the grad-night party with his friends.
You’ll always remember it,
she’d said tiredly, although they both knew it was a lie. Intellectually, she knew she should make him go, pretend that his life was still going forward on the same old track, but she couldn’t really
feel
that.

So they’d driven home in silence. She sat slumped against the car window, cold to the bone even though the seat’s heater was set on high. In the seat behind her, Zach drummed his fingers on the seat rest, and when they got home, he bolted out of the car and ran up the stairs. No doubt he wanted to lose himself in video games.

“Lexi was there,” Miles said later, when he and Jude were alone in the kitchen.

Jude felt a rush of anger. Whole, healthy Lexi, with just a white arm cast to mark her place in the car that night.

“That takes nerve. I hope Zach didn’t see her.”

“He did,” Miles said, looking at her. “Don’t do that, Jude. You’ll make it worse.”

“Worse? Are you
kidding
me? How could this possibly get worse?”

“Don’t make Zach choose between you and Lexi. He loves you; you know that. He’s always done everything he could to make you proud of him. Don’t use that against him now. He and Lexi have things to work out.”

Jude sighed heavily and headed to her bedroom, closing the door behind her.

For the next forty-eight hours all she did was lie in bed, sometimes sleeping, sometimes crying. She lay there with her eyes closed for hours, thinking
come to me, Mia,
talking to her daughter, but nothing happened. Not a breeze across her face that felt like a breath, not a flickering of the bedside lamp. Nothing. And she didn’t really believe that Mia could hear her.

By the time she finally crawled out of bed, she looked like a ninety-year-old homeless woman who had found a designer dress on the street and worn it for weeks. She knew Miles didn’t understand. Last night he’d made that sound—that sigh of desperation or despair—when she couldn’t change into a nightgown. He didn’t understand how fragile she felt. If she lifted her arms, they might break off.

She changed into an old pair of sweats. Not bothering to shower or brush her teeth, she made her way out of the bedroom, drawn forward by the scent of Starbucks coffee.

Miles was in the kitchen, sitting at the granite counter, sipping coffee. At her entrance, he sat up straighter, gave her a smile of relief that should have warmed her broken heart.

The television was on. Before Jude could say anything, she heard the newscaster say, “… killed her best friend in a drunk-driving incident only a week before graduation.”

Jude shouldn’t have looked at the screen, but she did. The twisted, ruined Mustang with the windshield shattered made her almost violently ill. She hadn’t seen that image before … and then Lexi’s face was on-screen, smiling brightly. “Local MADD president Norma—”

Miles hit the remote, and the screen went black.

Jude felt that new anger rising in her again; it drowned out everything else. She heard Miles talking to her, but she couldn’t hear anything except this roaring white noise in her head. She poured herself a cup of coffee and walked out of the kitchen.

How would she survive this? How could she see Lexi again on the street someday and not just fall to her knees?

Lexi, who could go on with her life …

Jude stood in the great room, trembling, wondering what to do. Should she go back to bed?

She closed her eyes, trying to clear her mind of the image she’d just seen of Zach’s car …

At first, she thought she heard her heart beating, and she thought:
that’s odd
, and then she realized someone was knocking on the front door. Wiping her eyes, she went to the door, expecting to see a friend with a casserole, saying,
I’m so sorry,
but it was a stranger who stood there, a tall, elegant-looking, gray-haired man in a pinstriped blue suit.

“Hello, Mrs. Farraday. I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Dennis Uslan. I’m the prosecuting attorney assigned to your case. My niece, Helen, graduated with Zachary.”

Jude’s breath released in a rush. She hadn’t even realized she’d been holding it. “Yes, Dennis. Of course I remember you. You helped with construction of the new ball field at Rotary Park.”

“Yes, that’s right. I’m sorry to simply stop by, but your phone seems to be off the hook.”

“Reporters,” she said, stepping back. “They call constantly asking for a ‘comment on our tragedy.’ Come in.” She led him into the great room, where sunlight shone through the giant windows. The view over the Sound was spectacular on this crystalline day.

Dennis had just taken a seat when Miles walked into the room, dressed in shorts for running.

“Miles,” Jude said. “This is Dennis Uslan. He’s the prosecuting attorney for our case.”

Miles looked at Dennis. “I wasn’t aware we had a case.”

Dennis rose from his seat. “That’s what I wanted to speak to you about. I’m getting a lot of pressure from MADD and the community to charge Alexa Baill with DUI vehicular homicide. Obviously a trial can be a lengthy and heartbreaking undertaking, and I wanted to know where you stand on the idea.”

“What would happen to Lexi?” Miles asked.

“If convicted, she could face more than fifteen years in prison, although, admittedly, that outcome is extreme. She could also be found not guilty or plea bargain to something lesser. Any way you go, though, it’s tough on the victim’s family.”