The Good Widow(85)

Yes, I want to say. I can hear you, Mom. But my mouth won’t open. I want to tell her I can hear the tears in her throat. She’s been crying.

Where am I?

“Doctor, she’s trying to say something!” It’s my sister’s shaking voice now, and the urgency in it gives me the push I need to force my eyes open. Beth is by my side—dark shadows under her eyes. My mom’s are swollen and puffy. Dad’s are filled with relief. He smiles at me.

I look around, my pulse quickening. I see monitors. An IV drip attached to my arm. A thin hospital gown covering me. A cast on one leg. A scratchy sheet rubbing the other. I try to move, but the pain is too severe. I try to talk, but no words will come.

A man with thinning gray hair rushes in. “I’m Dr. Turner.” A nurse follows him, and he says something about checking my vitals. They start to examine me, flashing lights in my eyes, checking my pulse, looking inside my mouth. They ask me questions that I struggle to answer, not because I don’t know what my name is or what year it is, but because my mouth is so dry. The nurse hands me a cup of water and tells me to sip it slowly. Finally Dr. Turner pulls up a stool, gives me a sympathetic smile, and asks me what I remember.

I can feel a memory sitting in the periphery of my mind, waiting for me to grab it. I think hard. Force myself to recall what happened. What brought me here.

I close my eyes, and it comes to me like an electric shock.

Nick. The lack of remorse. The refusal to accept what he’d done. His ambivalence. My rage. His rage. The fight for the steering wheel.

“A car acc—”

I start to say accident, but stop to correct it to crash. Because it wasn’t an accident at all. Just like James’s wasn’t. Tears stream down my cheeks at the horror of what’s happened—the memory of Nick’s words, his justifications—hitting me all over again. I fell in love with the man who killed my husband. James.

He’s gone. Oh my God. It feels like the wound has been torn open all over again. As if he’s been ripped from me all over again.

Beth rushes over and wipes my tears, having no idea how much pain I’m actually in. What’s really happened.

Dr. Turner continues. “You are at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach. You have several lacerations from the impact,” he says, giving me a moment. I reach up and feel a bandage around my head. “We had to put eleven stitches in your scalp and three over your right eye, so you probably have a pretty nasty headache.” The nurse comes over and adjusts my IV. “You’ve been unconscious for almost twenty-four hours.”

Almost a full day? It feels like I was in the car just moments ago. I can still hear his voice.

“On a scale of one to ten—ten being unbearable—how much pain are you in?”

Emotionally or physically?

“Five,” I finally say, choosing the first number that comes to mind. How could I explain that the pain in my heart is far worse than the one in my body? I’d give that pain a fifteen.

“Janet just gave you a dose of Percocet,” he says, nodding at the nurse. “So you should feel relief very soon.”

Will I?

“You also broke your leg,” the doctor continues. “In two places.” He taps the cast just below my knee and also by my shin.

“You’re lucky to be alive.” Beth says, squeezing my hand.

“Thank God,” my mom sobs. “First James and his terrible accident, and then you. When I got the call, I was outside of my own body, thinking I could not lose you, my baby. Thank God. Thank God.” My mom presses her face into my chest, and I wince from the pain, but don’t let her know how much it hurts.

“The police asked to be called when you’re feeling up to it. They have a few questions for you,” the doctor says.

I feel the rush of the car swerving out of its lane, my head slamming against the window.

The police.

The last time I talked to two officers, they told me my husband was never coming home because he’d died in a car crash. And now they wanted to talk to me about my car crash. But there was so much more to tell them.

The ID, the purse, Nick.

“How is Nick?” I find my sister’s eyes, and they tell me the answer I both feared and hoped for.

Beth and my parents exchange a look, and the doctor and nurse silently leave the room. Beth is still holding my hand, gripping it harder as she talks. “He was ejected from the car. He didn’t make it,” she says softly.

“Nick is dead?” I ask, needing to hear it again. To be sure.

“Yes, I’m so sorry.” Beth says, not realizing my tears are flowing faster and harder not because I’m sad, but because I’m relieved.





CHAPTER FORTY-THREE


JACKS—AFTER

A month later, the sound of Nick’s screams as we flew over the cliff aren’t quite as deafening. I don’t see the flash of the guardrail every time I close my eyes. I don’t remember my head hitting the driver’s-side window each night when I lay it on my pillow. The memories of the crash have subsided slightly.

But the vivid details of Nick’s words, those memories—they could live with me forever.

Beth was horrified when I told her the story in the hospital—then enraged. She said she would’ve killed him if he hadn’t already been dead.