The Secret Between Us (3 page)

She wouldn’t talk, because her mother was still with the police and Mr. McKenna was at the hospital and it was
all her fault
—and nothing her friends could say would make it better.

Chapter 2

It was another hour before the state agents dismantled their lights, and a few minutes more before a tow truck arrived. Deborah knew the driver. He worked at the service station in the center of town and was a frequent customer at her sister’s bakery. That meant Jill would hear about the accident soon after she opened at six.

Brian drove her home, pulling into the circular drive and, at her direction, past the fieldstone house to the shingled garage. She was exhausted and thoroughly wet, but as soon as she had closed the cruiser door and was sprinting forward hugging her medical bag and Grace’s books, she opened her phone and called the hospital. While she waited for an answer, she punched in the code for the garage. The door rumbled up as the call went through. “Joyce? It’s Deborah Monroe again. Any word on Calvin McKenna?”

“Hold on, Dr. Monroe. Let me check.”

Deborah dropped her armload and hung her slicker on a hook not far from the bay where her car should have stood. Leaving her flip-flops on the landing, she hurried inside, through the kitchen to the laundry room.

“Dr. Monroe? He’s in stable condition. They’re running tests now, but the neurologist doesn’t see any evidence of vertebral fracture or paralysis. He has a broken hip. They’ll deal with that in the operating room once this last scan is done.”

“Is he conscious?” Deborah asked, back in the kitchen, drying her arms with a towel.

“Yes, but not communicating.”

“He can’t speak?”

“They suspect he can but won’t. They can’t find a physical explanation.”

Deborah had run the towel over her face and was lowering it when she spotted Grace in the corner. “Trauma, maybe?” she speculated. “Thanks, Joyce. Would you do me a favor? Let me know if there’s any change?”

Still dressed, Grace was hunched over, biting her nail. Deborah pulled the hand away and drew her close.

“Where
were
you?” the girl asked meekly.

“Same place.”

“All this time?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why did the police drive you home?”

“Because they don’t want me driving my car until they’ve examined it in daylight.”

“Isn’t the cop who drove you home coming in?”

Deborah drew back to study her face. They weren’t quite the same height, but almost. “No. They’re done for the night.”

Grace’s voice went up a notch. “How can they be done?”

“They’ve asked their questions.”

“Asked you, not me. What did you tell them?”

“I said we were driving home in the rain, visibility was terrible, and Mr. McKenna ran out from nowhere. They’ll have to go back along the road in the morning to see if there’s anything they missed that the rain didn’t get. I’ll file a report at the station tomorrow and get the car. Where’s Dylan?”

“He went to bed. He must have thought you were home. What do we tell him, Mom? I mean, he’ll know something happened when he sees your car missing, and besides, it was
Mr. McKenna.
This is such my luck that it was my teacher. I mean, like, I’m so
bad
at American history, people will think it was deliberate. What do I tell my friends?”

“You are not bad at U.S. history.”

“I shouldn’t be in the AP section. I don’t have a prayer of placing out when I take the test in June. I
suck
.”

If she did, it was news to Deborah. “You tell them that we couldn’t see Mr. McKenna in the rain, and that we weren’t going very fast.”

“You keep saying
we
.”

Yes. Deborah realized that. “I was the licensed driver in the car. I was the one responsible.”

“But I was the one at the wheel.”

“You were my responsibility.”

“If you’d been driving, the accident wouldn’t have happened.”

“Not true, Grace. I didn’t see Mr. McKenna, and I was watching the road as closely as if my own foot was on the gas.”

“But it wasn’t your foot on the gas.”

Deborah paused, but only for a minute. Slowly, she said, “The police assume it was.”

“And you’re not telling them the truth? Mom, that’s lying.”

“No,” she said, sorting it out even as she spoke. “They drew their own conclusion. I just haven’t corrected them.”

“Mom.”

“You’re a juvenile, Grace,” Deborah reasoned. “You were only driving on a permit, which means that you were driving on my license, which makes me responsible. I’ve been driving for twenty-two years and have a spotless record. I can weather this better than you can.” When Grace opened her mouth to protest again, Deborah pressed a hand to her lips. “This is right, sweetie. I know it is. We can’t control the weather, and we can’t control what other people do. We were compliant with every law in the book and did our very best to stop. There was no negligence involved on our part.”

“What if he dies?”

“He won’t.”

“But what if he does? That’s
murder.
”

“No,” Deborah argued, though the word
murder
gave her a chill, “it would be vehicular homicide, but since we did absolutely nothing wrong, there won’t be any charges.”

“Is that what Uncle Hal said?”

Hal Trutter was the husband of Deborah’s friend Karen, and while neither he nor Karen were actually related to the Monroes, they had known the children since birth. Their daughter, Danielle, was a year ahead of Grace.

Deborah saw Karen often. Lately, she had felt more awkward with Hal, but that was a whole other story.

“I haven’t talked with him yet,” she told Grace, “but I know he’d agree. And anyway, Mr. McKenna is not going to die.”

“What if he’s crippled for life?”

“You’re getting carried away with this, Grace,” Deborah warned, though she harbored the same fears. The difference was that she was the mother. She couldn’t panic.

“I saw his leg,” the girl wailed. “It was sticking out all wrong, like he fell from the top of a building.”

“But he didn’t fall from the top of a building. He is definitely alive, the nurse just told me so, and broken bones can be fixed.”

Grace’s face crumbled. “It was awful. I will never forget that sound.”

Nor would Deborah. She could still hear it—that
thud
—hours after the fact. Seeking purchase, she clutched Grace’s shoulders. “I need a shower, sweetie. I’m chilled, and my legs are filthy.” Keeping an arm around the girl, she walked her up the stairs and down the hall. In addition to the three children’s rooms, the third for a last child that Deborah and Greg might have had, there was a family room that had built-in desks, a sofa, matching armchairs, and a flat-screen TV. After Greg left, Deborah had spent so many nights here with the kids that she finally just moved into the third bedroom.

Grace was biting her nails again by the time they reached her door. Taking the hand from her mouth, Deborah looked at her daughter for a long, silent moment. “Everything will be fine,” she whispered before letting her go.

The texting had
stopped before her mother got home, for which Grace was grateful. What could she tell Megan? Or Stephie? Or Becca?
My mom is taking the blame for something I did? My mom is lying so I won’t be arrested? My mom could go to
jail
if Mr. McKenna dies?

Grace had thought the divorce was bad. This was worse.

Deborah had hoped
that the shower would calm her, but warm, clean, and finally dry, she could think more clearly, and a clearer mind simply magnified what had happened. The sound of the rain didn’t help. It pounded the roof much as it had the car, and she remembered another night, the one when her mother had died. It had been pouring then, too.

Creeping into Dylan’s room, she knelt by the bed. His eyes were closed, dark lashes lying on cheeks that wouldn’t be smooth much longer. He was a gentle child with more than his share of worry, and while she knew that there were cures for his vision problems, her heart ached.

Not wanting to wake him, but helpless to leave without a touch, she moved her hand over his sandy hair. Then she went to her room, slipped into bed, and pulled the covers to her chin. She had barely settled when she heard Dylan’s steps, muted by the old slipper-socks that he wore every night. They were the last pair Ruth Barr had knit before her death, too big for him at first, now stretched so thin that they were about to fall apart. He refused to let Deborah throw them out, saying that they kept his Nana Ruth alive. In that instant, Deborah needed her mother, too.

“I tried to stay awake ’til you got home,” he mumbled.

Pulling him toward her, Deborah waited only until he set his glasses on the nightstand before tucking him in next to her. He was asleep almost at once. Moments later, Grace joined them, crawling in on the other side. It was a snug fit, though preferable to lying awake alone. Deborah reached for her daughter’s hand.

“I won’t be able to sleep,” the girl whispered, “not at all, the whole night.”

Deborah turned her head in the dark and whispered back, “Here’s the thing. We can’t rewind the clock. What happened happened. We know that Mr. McKenna is in good hands and that if there’s any change, we’ll get a call. Right?”

Grace made a doubtful sound but said nothing more. In time her breathing lengthened, but she slept in fits and starts. Deborah knew because she remained awake for a long time after that, and for reasons that went well beyond the drumming of rain on the roof. She kept seeing that striped running suit, kept feeling the jolt of impact.

Sandwiched between the children, though, she knew she couldn’t panic. After her marriage ended, she had made a vow. No more harm to the kids. No…more…harm.

The phone rang
at six the next morning. Deborah had been sleeping for less than three hours, and the press of her children made her slow to react. Then she remembered what had happened, and her stomach clenched.

Fearing Calvin McKenna had taken a turn for the worse, she bolted up and, reaching over Dylan, grabbed the phone. “Hello?”

“It’s me,” said her sister. “I figured your alarm would be going off soon. Mack Tully was just in here. He said you hit someone last night.”

“Oh. Jill.” Relieved, Deborah let out a breath. She and her sister were close, though very different from each other. Jill was thirty-four to Deborah’s thirty-eight, blonde to her brunette, five-two to Deborah’s five-six, and the maverick of the family. Despite two long-term relationships, she hadn’t married, and while Deborah had followed their father into medicine, Jill flat-out refused to take any science courses. After one post–high school year as a baker’s apprentice in New Jersey, then a second year in New York and four more as a dessert chef on the West Coast, she had come back to Leyland to open her own bakery. In the ten years since her return, she had expanded three times—all to her father’s chagrin. Michael still prayed she would wake up one day, go back to school, and do something
real
with her life.

Deborah had always loved her little sister, even more in the three years since their mother had died. Jill was Ruth. She lived simply but smartly, and, like her bakery, she exuded warmth. Just hearing her voice was a comfort. Talking with Ruth on the phone had conjured the smell of warm, fresh-baked bread. Talking with Jill on the phone conjured the smell of pecan-topped sticky buns.

The image soothed the rough edges of fear. “It was a nightmare, Jill,” she murmured tiredly. “I had just gotten Grace, and it was rainy and dark. We were driving slowly. He came out of nowhere.”

“Was he drunk?”

“I don’t think so. I didn’t smell anything.”

“Vodka doesn’t smell.”

“I couldn’t exactly ask him, Jill. He wasn’t talking.”

“The history teacher, huh? Is he badly hurt?”

“He was operated on last night, likely to put a pin in his hip.”

“Marty Stevens says the guy is odd—a loner, not real friendly.”

“Serious is the word, I think. He doesn’t smile much. Did Marty say anything else?”

“No, but Shelley Wyeth did. She lives near the McKennas. She said his wife is weird, too. They don’t mix much with the neighbors.” There was a brief pause. “Wow. You actually ran someone down. I didn’t think you had it in you.”