In an Instant(61)

Mo swallows, the words self-explanatory.

“There’s a fine line between an accidental death and a death caused by negligence. Do you think Bob purposely encouraged Oz to look for his mom?”

The pause lasts at least five seconds.

“I don’t know,” she says finally. “I have my suspicions, especially because of the gloves, but the truth is I don’t know.”

Burns returns Mo’s notebook and pulls the case file in front of him. “Was Natalie wearing the gloves when you were rescued?”

“I think so. Karen wore them for a little, but Natalie had them most of the time.”

“What color were they?”

“Purple, bright purple,” Mo says. “Oz’s favorite color.”

Burns rifles through the folder until he finds what he is looking for. He pulls out a newspaper article. “Bingo,” he says, handing the printout to Mo. The headline reads, Five Rescued from Crash after Night in the Snow. The photo below it shows Uncle Bob hobbling from a Forest Service helicopter with his arms slung over two rescue workers. Walking behind him is Natalie. She is almost out of view but visible enough to see a bright-purple glove sticking out from the sleeve of her long down coat.

“Maureen, this is important. Do you think Oz was dangerous?”

Again, Mo takes her time, constructing her answer carefully. “No, but I think Bob and Karen might have thought so. Oz just wanted to make sure Bingo had enough water. He felt responsible for the dog. Everything would have been fine if they had just let me melt enough water for Bingo and then for the rest of us.”

“Tell me the order of who you gave the water to.”

“Mr. Miller, Oz, Natalie, Karen, but Oz took it—”

“Karen was after Natalie?”

“Yeah, except Oz took it from her.”

“But you weren’t next, after Natalie?” I feel Burns’s anger ignite over this seemingly tiny detail, any doubt he had before about pursuing Bob incinerated.

“Is it important that I wasn’t next?” Mo asks.

“It shows a pattern of negligence, a disregard for your welfare.”

It shows more than that, but Burns is being polite. Inside he broils, and I know from his expression that he does in fact have a daughter, and at this moment, he is thinking of her.

Mo has begun crying again. I’m not certain if it’s the recall of that awful moment or the realization that Bob, a man she’s known most of her life, was so cruel.

“It’s all so awful,” she says through her tears. “I know what Bob did was terrible, but he wouldn’t have done any of it except for the situation we were in.”

As I watch her cry, I wonder about this, about whether our humanity is determined more by circumstance than conscience, and if any of us if backed into a corner can change. I saw it that day, none of them turning out to be the people they believed themselves to be.

It’s different for everyone—some, like my mom and Mo, have more moral fortitude than others—but perhaps in all of us there is a base instinct for self-preservation, a feral nature, that when tested makes us capable of things we never believed ourselves capable of. Not even necessarily selfish. Bob didn’t take the gloves for himself. He gave them to Natalie. It was Karen who was terrified of Oz, and Bob sent him away to protect her.

So does that justify what Bob did or merely explain it? Bob didn’t set out that day to kill Oz or to neglect Mo. He set out to enjoy a weekend ski trip with his family and friends, and yet, because of him, Oz is dead.

Desperate people do things they wouldn’t normally do. Prior to the accident, if you asked Bob or Karen or Vance if they were good people, without hesitation, all three would have said yes, and everyone who knew them would have agreed. All evidence pointed to that conclusion. When they heard a story of cowardice or cruelty, they would have shaken their heads and tsked and thought, Never, not me, unaware that at any given moment, all of us are capable of doing what we least expect, them included. It is easy to sit in judgment after the fact. What those who judge don’t realize is that, odds are, if they were put in the same situation as Bob or Karen or Vance, that condescending righteousness would freeze its ass off before the sun set.

Oz didn’t come back into the camper. Mo didn’t go after him. Is this possibly the same? Choosing her own survival instead of risking death to save him?

I don’t blame Mo for what she did. I was there, and she was amazing, as brave as any sixteen-year-old girl could be in that situation. But if she is not to blame for her weakness, then is Bob to blame for his? Is my mom to blame for opening her hand when she held Kyle’s life in her grip? Vance left the love of his life to freeze to death alone. Karen only looked after Natalie. Natalie did nothing. Bob took Oz’s gloves and sent him into the cold. Certainly some seem worse than others, but no one is entirely inculpable.

Mo realizes this as well, and this is why she cries. Nothing is as it was. The pretense of valor, her own and others’, has been decimated and the ugly truth of human nature revealed.

“Oz is dead. Bob took his gloves,” Burns says, clarifying with stern certainty exactly where the line exists, and specifically who crossed it.

And I lurch back to remembering how unfairly it all turned out. My mom and dad hobble forward, pieces and parts of their lives beyond their dead children permanently gone. Chloe and Vance barely survived, both their lives derailed. Karen lives in a state of manic denial. Natalie lives in a glass house of lies teetering on the edge of a cliff.