Wish You Were Gone(2)
After a breath, Hunter started down the stairs, and again, Emma followed. He first peeked his head into the den; nothing. Feeling braver, Emma crossed to the game room and glanced inside herself. Nothing. Together, side-by-side now, they walked to the kitchen. Every pot hung from its hook, every plate sat in its slot in the custom cabinet. The drawers were closed, the canisters lined up by height, the mixer clean and covered. A place for everything and everything in its place. Everything except for the broken front window, cardboard-covered, the tape already starting to peel back.
Was it possible they’d imagined it? A mass delusion of two people? A shared nightmare? When Hunter was young, there had been times that Emma woke up from a bad dream seconds before he called out to her, and when she’d arrived in his room, both of them bleary eyed, she was sure she’d taken as much comfort from cuddling up in his bed with him as he had in having her there. Hunter never wanted to tell her what his nightmares were about, but she always wondered if they’d dreamt the same thing at the same time. If it was possible to be that connected to another person.
Standing next to him now, together in their unease, she marveled that she’d ever felt that close to him. They still had their things—a shared sarcastic sense of humor, the ability to inhale entire pints of H?agen-Dazs while watching bad horror movies, yearly debates over which Christmas special is the greatest of all time—but in so many ways he was an enigma to her now. A grown man, practically. He was a good kid—good grades, glowing reports from coaches and teachers, nary a scandal about him in a private school with its share of scandals—but she barely knew him beyond that. He moved through the house with his own agenda—practice, school, workout, party, study, rinse, repeat.
Emma caught her ghostly reflection in one of the glass-fronted cabinets. Her skin looked pale, and she could see the bruise-like circles under her eyes. Her blond hair was a tangle at the back of her head.
Something groaned and the glasses in the cabinets tinkled. They looked at the door to the garage.
“Mom?” Hunter said.
This time, Emma went first, silently cursing James with every shaky step. Her feet were cold and clammy against the ceramic tiles and her hand shook as she reached for the doorknob. The door swung open soundlessly, but the garbled, gurgling, gaspy noise that issued from her throat was so odd it startled her.
For a long moment, Emma’s brain couldn’t process what her eyes were seeing. James’s car—his brand-new, sleek, black, midlife-crisis BMW convertible—was in its spot in the garage, but it had been crushed. It was covered in brick and plaster and dust and random gardening tools—a rake, a shovel, a hose. Half the back wall of the garage was gone, collapsed over the vehicle, a massive hole lending a jagged view of the stars in the autumn sky.
The engine was still running. The headlights glowing softly from behind plaster shards. And her husband’s leg—his pressed pants cuff, his Ralph Lauren sock, his shiny brown shoe—hung out the open driver’s-side door.
EMMA
Emma had made it as far as the kitchen island before her legs gave out. Luckily, her son was there to catch her, having returned just in time from the bathroom, where he’d quickly and loudly thrown up. He’d deposited her on one of the less-than-comfortable stools that faced the marble countertop. Now, an hour later, she hadn’t moved. Her bag was still there. The long brown envelope full of papers. Her keys. Everything she had tossed aside in anger when she’d arrived home hours earlier.
She remembered the texts she had sent her husband and wondered, in her haze, where his phone was right now.
The police had it, probably. The police, who had been here for the last… half hour? Forty-five minutes? She had no concept of time. Her face felt tight and her brain was made of pudding. The red and blue lights of the police cruisers pulsated all around her.
It was a good thing that their street was so private—only three homes on the cul-de-sac, and theirs at the very end—built way down in the valley. The neighbors would have noticed dozens of emergency vehicles, of course, but none of them were gauche enough to come out in the middle of the night, to stand at the end of the driveway gathering their robes at their necks and theorizing with one another.
How does someone drive his car through his own garage? Heart attack? Stroke? Or maybe he was on something. Maybe he was drunk. But James? James Walsh? Not possible.
No. In their town, their snug New Jersey town, tragedies happened in a vacuum. People didn’t rush to help or to ask anyone directly involved what had gone down. They waited a respectable amount of time, and then, they started assuming; gossiping.
“Mom?”
Hunter stepped up behind her. He was clutching his own elbows. Behind him was a police officer. A young, nice-looking man, who seemed uncomfortable in his uniform.
“This is Officer Kim,” Hunter said. “He wants to talk to you.”
“Ma’am.” Officer Kim held a stylus in one hand, an iPad in the other. Of course. No pads and pens for the Oakmont Police Department. They were keeping pace with the times. “I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am.”
She stared at him. His black hair was cut very short and gelled into place. He had kind eyes.
“Mom?” Hunter said.
He’d moved off to the side and was hovering, chewing on the side of his thumb. She hadn’t seen him do that since he was ten years old.