The Last Thing She Ever Did(44)

Over time, memory played tricks against reality. Jimmy insisted that neither of them had actually seen what happened. He said they were crouched down on the rock, holding on with everything they had. The station wagon vanished.

The cold of the water—that she knew to be true.

She, her brother, and Dr. Miller were admitted to the hospital to treat their injuries and the hypothermia that came with the flood. Liz had a gash on her thigh that took eighteen stitches to close, along with a cracked rib and a broken foot that had her in a cast for the first six weeks of the school year. Jimmy had been luckier. His physical injuries were minor. His skin was bruised, but apart from some abrasions on his knees and a fingernail that had been torn off, he was fine.

Liz held memories of her parents and grandparents coming to see her at the hospital. The look in their eyes had meant to calm her, she later understood, but it sent her into a panic. Never had she seen such alarm in their eyes.

Jimmy was in the same room, a curtain separating them when the nurses came to examine her. Liz hated the sound made by the metal hooks holding up the big white curtain whenever the medical staff drew it open or closed.

“Where’s Seth?” she asked one of the nurses.

“Let me get your mother,” the nurse said, swiping the curtain open and looking at Bonnie Camden.

“She’s asking about her friend,” the nurse said.

Mrs. Camden’s blue eyes seemed almost gray. Red and gray. She’d tried to make herself presentable, but her makeup had been applied carelessly and her lipstick was a red smear. Liz would think about that from time to time. Wondering why her mother had bothered to put any makeup on at all . . . or if it was the makeup she’d had on from the day before. Liz had lost all track of time while she lay there in the hospital bed, staring, thinking.

“Honey,” her mother said, “we have some sad news about Seth.”

Her mom waited a beat so Liz could prepare herself for what she already expected after picking up the pieces of whispers from the other side of the curtain while she waited for the doctors and nurses to do whatever it was they had needed to do.

Even so, she asked, “What, Mommy? What happened to Seth?”

Her mother placed a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry, honey. Seth didn’t make it.”

Her father, a big man with dark brown llama eyes, reached from behind her mother.

“We’re lucky that you and Jimmy are alive. None of you should have been up that canyon road with the rains we had.”

Liz started to cry. She didn’t know what else to do.

Later she would revisit that salvo thrown by her father at their neighbor. There would be others. The Millers would nearly fade from their lives, only to be seen when crossing paths at the store or when Dan Miller would mow his lawn that perfect way that he always did. The Camdens would pounce at every opportunity to cast blame on the man who “could have killed our kids.” Others would agree. They’d nod or even corroborate the charge that Dan Miller had been incompetent, drunk, and generally a nefarious character.

Everything changed for everyone who’d been so happy the morning of the fishing trip to Diamond Lake. They hadn’t let the rainy forecast or the showers the night before get in the way of what they all thought was going to be an outing to remember—which it became for all the wrong reasons. And now there was nothing but a wall of pain between all of them. What had been a loving and fun relationship was now icy and cold. What had been a bond between two families living across a river from each other had been upended. When the city proposed a footbridge across the river, Liz’s father lobbied hard to get it moved a little farther north. He was careful with his words, even suggesting that the resident beavers would be disturbed by the proximity of the bridge—although anyone who lived on the river knew that beavers didn’t care one jot about the tourists who had started to pour into Bend.

Liz was a teenager then, but she knew the underlying reason.

Her father didn’t want a direct route to the Millers. His own shortcomings as a father had made him sickened by the sight of the man across the river. A mistake like the one made by Dan Miller was a virus. Liz remembered how the backyard chickens her grandfather kept would relentlessly peck at an injured bird—peck and peck until a small wound turned into an open gash. Until the weakened bird was pushed into the corner of the coop, unable to fend off its attackers, which pecked, pecked, pecked until all that was left was a bloody carcass.

Her parents had been Dan Miller’s first stealth assailants. Others followed. Whatever the doctor did was suddenly seen through the smeared lens of something he’d done—or something he hadn’t done. His medical practice suffered. His membership in the Rotary lapsed. Kiwanis too.

The lawn fronting the river became the only aspect of the man’s life that looked as though the unthinkable had never occurred. It was a velvet strip of green separating his house from the water’s edge. The river had become a moat that isolated the Millers.

It was true that Miranda Miller fared far better than her husband. Many pitied Dan’s wife. Some wondered if she’d forgiven her husband for what happened or if she reminded him at every turn that Seth was gone. She was seen as a tragic figure, as much for the fact that she was married to Dan as for being the mother of the little boy who had drowned in the flash flood that last weekend of summer. The visits between Liz’s mother and Mrs. Miller continued over the years, but only sporadically, and never foursomes with their husbands. No more joint barbecues or outings around town.