Never Have I Ever(23)

I never had made it to Mobile to see Tig Simms. Instead I’d hired a local lawyer to investigate him, and I’d learned that his business was in trouble. Two mortgages, the second at a high interest rate. With Boyce Skelton and the local lawyer’s help, I’d created a corporation called Fresh Starts, whose stated purpose was to help small businesses thrive. Its actual purpose was smaller and more singular—to help Tig Simms. Fresh Starts paid off close to three hundred thousand dollars, saving the garage, and I’d let that be the end of it. Since I’d never faced him, no one from my past knew that I was back in town, so no one could have told Roux about me.

Roux could not have run across my story in some law-enforcement file or even in an old newspaper. The court records were sealed because we’d been minors, and my picture and my name had never appeared; I’d barely been a footnote in those stories.

Even if she did somehow know, I told myself, Tig and I had been children. We had believed we’d owned those roads at 3:00 a.m. We had never meant for it to happen. That night Mrs. Shipley lost her life and her family was shattered. It was horrific. What I did altered the future for so many people, and in such painful and irrevocable ways—but it had been an accident. Reckless, careless, but not malicious.

And yet these thoughts gave me little peace. The pressure in my chest had the added weight of everything that happened after. It was rising now, called up by Roux’s knowing manner and her godforsaken game, even though only two people walking God’s green earth—me and my mother—knew that killing Mrs. Shipley was not in and of itself the worst thing I had ever done. It was only the beginning.





4




“You usually went to Waffle House,” the new detective said. “So did Tighler Simms decide on his own to drive back to your neighborhood that night?”

I sat on the sofa in our living room, wedged between my mother and my main lawyer, feeling both much older and much younger than my fifteen years. I wanted to say, No one calls Tig “Tighler.” Not even his teachers. I wanted to ask, Is Tig okay? I wanted to know, most of all, Can I please see him? But at the intake of my breath, my lawyer laid a soft, restraining hand on my shoulder and talked before I could.

“Asked and answered.”

“Well . . .” the new detective said. He was a schlumpy older guy, balding, with a broad, pale face. He seemed kind, more like a dad than the one who’d talked to me at the hospital. He seemed more like a dad than my own father, who was leaning in the doorway that led back to his study, radiating impatient anger. The detective sat across from me, leaning forward, so that I felt hemmed in on all sides.

The police hadn’t even talked to me right after the accident. I was a stoned, drunk minor, bleeding profusely from the mouth, throwing up more blood and sour wine, moaning and struggling. They sent me straight to emergency, although I had no memory of that journey.

I’d almost bitten through the right side of my tongue in the crash. The doctor numbed it, making it feel like a foreign piece of meat invading my mouth, then cut away a small wedge that was too mangled to save. I’d needed fifteen stitches. They had also shoved a tube up my nose and down into my stomach to siphon out alcohol and the blood I’d swallowed, then sent me for a CT scan and admitted me.

When I woke up, sober and sorry late the next morning, my mother was sitting by my hospital bed. She was brittle and excessively cheerful, tapping and dabbing at me with her hands, trying in her way to be comforting. Really trying. At first. No recriminations, no lecture, only assurances that she was going to fix this. Money was her love language, and she told me she’d already found me an excellent lawyer; he was on the way. When he came, she presented him as “the best defense attorney in the state,” with the same look on her face she had when she served beluga to her party guests.

He had a power tie and silver-gray hair that folded away from his face in a majestic swoop, and he questioned me for a solid hour. My tongue was still swollen, pulsing with pain around the stitches. It was not up to telling stories, but I did my best. My answers seemed to satisfy him, and my mother sat nearby, nodding encouragingly.

It went well, right up until the end, when he told me Tig had been arrested at the scene for possession; they’d found half a dime bag in his front pocket. Other charges against Tig were pending, he said. That was when I burst into tears.

My mother’s lips thinned, and she leaned toward me. I noticed she had brand-new circles under her eyes, shining faintly purple through her concealer. “Are you crying over that boy? Don’t you dare! You need to be worried about you. You could be charged, too, underage drinking or possession, Mitch says. Tell her, Mitch!”

The lawyer shook his head. “Leave all that to me. Even if the worst happens, Amy is looking at a misdemeanor. Community service.”

“She’ll have an arrest record,” my mother said. “That will follow her—follow all of us—forever.”

“Follow us where?” I asked, confused, tears streaming unstoppably down my cheeks.

“She doesn’t mean it literally,” the lawyer said, kind.

My mother shook her head. “Yes, I do. We have to move. My God, the Shipley house is two blocks down. Excuse us a moment?” This to Mitch, who took a purely ceremonial step away and turned to face the window. My mother leaned in, putting her face close to mine. “First tears I’ve seen, and they’re for that boy?”