In Her Wake (Ten Tiny Breaths 0.5)(29)

“I’m not making excuses for you. I’m just stating facts. Giving you reasons. The fact is, you didn’t mean to hand keys over to your drunk friend. If you had known he was drunk, you probably would have waited and then driven yourself. Right?”

“Right, but—”

“And the fact is you didn’t intentionally drink too much.”

“Right, but that doesn’t change that I did it.”

“That’s right. You did it. And you can’t undo it. But your friend Sasha also asked you for the keys. And your friend Derek was perfectly capable of putting his seat belt on. So was Sasha. That was a choice they made—or didn’t make—and they paid for it with their lives.”

“And the Clearys? They didn’t ask for this.”

“No, they didn’t,” he agrees soberly. “They were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Just think, if they hadn’t stopped for pizza, if they didn’t go to that game . . .”

A shudder runs through me. “I know.” I’ve thought about it a lot. I’m sure Kacey has, too.

“But that’s life, Trent. Whether we like it or not, we live and die by an endless stream of choices that affect each next step in our lives. Sometimes in ways we never dared think of or hoped for. Sometimes in ways we can’t make sense of for a long time. I’m trying to help you make sense of what happened because the sooner you do that, the sooner you can move on. You made a mistake, Trent. A mistake of drinking too much and believing that your friend was fine to drive. Sasha made the mistake of thinking he was fine to drive. Sasha and Derek made the mistake of not wearing their seat belts. And all of those mistakes turned into a tragic accident that claimed six people’s lives.”

He pauses, as if to let his words sink into my head. “I told my sons about this very case last night over dinner. They’re still too young to drive, but I like to scare the snot out of them with real-life scenarios every once in a while.”

“Isn’t that unethical?”

He waves my doubtful tone away with his free hand. “The accident is public knowledge.”

“What about everything else?” I wouldn’t be surprised if Dr. Stayner has provided a play-by-play review of our conversation to his kids over a plate of fried chicken. In the time that I’ve been here, I’ve quickly learned that the patient, pragmatic doctor is also a loud and insistent man, willing to roll up his sleeves and climb into the trenches with his patients. He pushes boundaries and he doesn’t mince words. Sometimes that causes problems. Last week, I saw him tearing out of this very office and toward the orderlies, a distraught patient hot on his heels, shrieking at him. They had to sedate her. Two days ago, he had a three-hundred-pound man named Terrence sobbing uncontrollably.

He says both of those cases were major breakthroughs.

I’ll reserve my judgment on that for now.

“I didn’t tell them the rest. Would you like me to? Or, better yet . . .” He holds up the large navel orange sitting on his desk, which has held my attention for some reason, and then tosses it to me. “Would you like to? Because I can guarantee you that your story matters. You can’t save your friends or the people in the other car. That’s in the past. But you can save lives now. In the future. When I talk about making amends, that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about.”

“So you finally agree that this was my fault,” I mutter wryly.

He throws his hands up in frustration. “I agree that you think it’s your fault. I can’t change that. You need to change that. Or accept it and move on. And the only way you’re going to do that is by easing your guilt. Feeling like you can earn some level of forgiveness. And the only way to do that is by making the amends that you feel you need to make. So, how about we draw a line in the sand and move on. Agree?”

I nod.

He drags a stubby finger across his desk. “Line drawn. Now we just need to figure out what your amends look like.”

Chapter 15

June 2010

“We haven’t spent much time talking about the girl who survived. What was her name?”

“Kacey Cleary.”

“Right. And how often do you think about this Kacey girl?”

I shrug, twisting a shoelace between my fingers. “I don’t know. Sometimes it’s a lot. Sometimes not so much.” Such an ambiguous answer. Such a lie. I wonder if Stayner sees it. He probably does. The shrewd doc never seems to miss anything.

If he does, he lets it go for now. “That’s normal. You feel like you’ve wronged her.”

“I have wronged her.”

He doesn’t argue with me any more about that. “Your father told me that you went to visit her once in the hospital?”

“Yeah. But I didn’t have the guts to actually see her.”

“Have you thought about trying to see her again?”

I’m guessing lying won’t do me any good here. “Yeah.” I pause. “Are you going to tell me I shouldn’t?” He’s going to tell me that I shouldn’t. I really f**king hope he doesn’t, because I damn well already know that I will.

He shrugs. “From what your father told me, it sounds like she’s had a rough go of things. She might not be so receptive to seeing you. And if you’re not completely at peace with where you’re at, I’m afraid it could set you back down a dark path that you don’t want to be on. You need to focus on yourself right now.”