All We Can Do Is Wait(27)



Skyler figured they were past it now, that it had just been an isolated flare-up, because Danny had been a little buzzed, because he was graduating and emotions were running high. They all took the limo back to Timmy McDonagh’s house, where there was a party since Timmy’s parents were away on a Caribbean cruise. Danny didn’t let Skyler out of his sight the rest of the night, but it felt like the good kind of Danny attention, the us-against-the-world kind, and when they’d gone up to an empty bedroom and had sex—almost like it was their first night together all over again—he said, “I love you, I love you, I love you” while they did it, the two of them falling asleep while spooning, Skyler feeling secure and reassured in Danny’s arms.

? ? ?

Skyler felt her phone vibrate again, quick and sharp, in her bag. Another text. She wasn’t going to look. She wasn’t going to look. It was him. She wasn’t going to look.

Suddenly, the emergency doors swooshed open, and with a cacophony of yells and siren blares and pounding feet, the first of the Tobin Bridge victims were rushed into the hospital on gurneys, the present moment suddenly so close and immediate and urgent that Skyler could feel it clamping her in place.

Here was the rest of her life, the rest of Kate’s life, about to be decided.





Chapter Six


    Alexa



SHE WASN’T SURE why, but Alexa found herself reaching for Scott’s hand as she watched the emergency room explode into action, nurses and doctors appearing as if from nowhere, all streaming toward the wail of the ambulances outside. It felt strangely like the people of honor had just arrived at the party being hosted for them, Alexa and all the other guests relieved that they were finally here, so the real evening could begin.

Alexa caught herself before she found Scott’s hand, instead turning toward her brother, who was looking at the flurry of activity with a dazed, open-mouthed expression. Jason turned toward Alexa, gave her a weak look, eyebrows raised. “This is good. Right? This is good. They’re gonna be with this group, I bet.” Alexa still wasn’t sure where this optimism, manic and seeming forced, was coming from. That was not the Jason she’d known for some time now, save for maybe the few peaceful, happy months they’d spent in Wellfleet a year ago. That time had been a mostly unexplained anomaly, and soon Jason was back to his sulking, his stormy moods.

When Alexa pictured her family, there was the brightness of those twelve weeks surrounded by a sad sort of emptiness. It was hard to picture her family as a family, instead of separate units all floating around the same house by chance. Still, that her parents might be hurt, or worse, threw Alexa off balance in a way that made her feel she might never right herself again. She was trying to think positively. But she couldn’t help but already feel like an orphan, as if the last vestiges of her always distant parents had finally evaporated, disappeared, drifted off somewhere unreachable.

The crowd of people in the waiting room was surging toward where patients were being brought in, against the loud protestations of Mary Oakes, hair out of place now, and the nurses who worked the reception desk. “Please! Please! Everyone remain calm,” they were all saying in near-unison, as people shouted demands for information. All of Alexa’s tablemates were standing, but Skyler was the only one trying to push forward into the group, using her small size to squeeze between people. Morgan, the girl who had just sat down with them minutes ago, was hanging back, biting a thumbnail and looking lost. Scott had a determined look on his face, as if he was about to go into battle. But he stood still, as unsure what to do as nervous-looking Morgan, as Alexa.

A strange impulse shivered through Alexa, and she got out her phone. She selected her mom’s cell phone number from her contacts and pressed “Call,” wondering if maybe, now that people from the accident were in the same building as she was, she might hear it, her mom’s familiar ringtone, the soothing classical cello piece calling to her out of all this pandemonium. But the phone went straight to voice mail, her mother’s high, crisp voice instructing her to leave a message.

Alexa hung up and tried her father’s phone, a number she rarely called, and it actually rang, giving Alexa a surge of hope before it too went to voice mail. Her father hadn’t set up an outgoing message, so it was just the robot lady reciting his number, then the dull beep of the prompt to start talking. Alexa considered saying something, an “If you get this, call me.” But she’d already left plenty of those for her mother hours ago, and it was really unlikely, even if he was in perfect shape, that her father would even check his messages. He was an e-mail man, glued to his BlackBerry at all times.

Except, of course, for that summer—that charmed June, July, and August when her whole family found some kind of harmony, a cruelly brief little miracle passing through their lives, binding them together before pulling them apart as it left. Her father had put down his phone sometimes then, looking out at the ocean from the porch, leaning back in his Adirondack chair, legs crossed, ice in his cocktail glass tinkling. “Pretty good,” he would say, nodding in approval. And Alexa agreed. At least then, the view was remarkable.

What had it been, back then? What crept in and fixed them for a little while? It was several things, most likely. Chief among them, the fact that Jason was clear-headed and almost kind. Not every day was like that evening on the beach, when they’d actually talked to each other. But things were lighter, airier, full of jokes and little kindnesses. Jason didn’t mind driving her to work, would even let her plug in her phone to listen to her music.

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