All We Ever Wanted(94)

At one point, when Polly convulses and her mom really starts to freak out, one paramedic looks up at me and shouts for my help. “Get her back,” she says.

“Mrs. Smith. Let them work!” I say, rushing forward to hold her arm for a moment. Before I retreat again, I get an unwanted closer look at Polly. Her body is completely limp, her skin pale. Yet, thank God, she still looks more asleep than dead. Then again, I’ve never seen a dead person. I pray that Polly won’t be my first. She just can’t die.

   I look away from her, returning my gaze to the empty bottles of Ambien and Maker’s Mark that her dad was holding when I first ran into the room and that are now on the floor next to the bed. Her mom’s pills and her dad’s booze—details gleaned when the paramedics first arrived and asked their questions. How many pills were left? How much whiskey was still in the bottle?

At least a dozen, Mrs. Smith said.

Half a bottle, Mr. Smith said.

I wonder now whether the combination was purposeful. Polly’s one-two punch to her parents, whom she felt she couldn’t talk to in a crisis. Or maybe, actually, her relationship with them was more like mine with my dad. Maybe Polly loved her parents so much that she would rather die than see shame on their faces.

If only she could see how much worse this is. How much more painful, even if she winds up being okay.

I can’t help thinking of my dad on the night he picked me up at Grace’s. How much it must have hurt him to see me the way I was. I vow that no matter what, I won’t ever do something like this to him. That I will take better care of myself. Make better decisions. Be more like him and less like my mother. It’s the least I can do.

Suddenly Mrs. Browning is in the room beside me, holding my hand. I notice that her back is to Polly—that she doesn’t look at her once, not until the stretcher is being carried out of the room and down the stairs and to the ambulance. Mrs. Browning and I follow, then stand on the porch, still holding hands, watching as Polly’s parents climb into the back with the stretcher and one of the paramedics, while the other one runs around to get in the front and drive. We stand there, frozen in place, watching as the ambulance races away in a blur of red lights and wailing sirens.

   After everything is silent once more, I turn and close the Smiths’ front door. We then walk to Mrs. Browning’s car and get in, both of us staring out the windshield.

“Do you think she’s going to be okay?” I say to Mrs. Browning but mostly to myself.

She shakes her head, then wipes away tears. “I don’t know, sweetie. But if she is? It will only be because of you.”

“And you,” I say. “Thank you for helping me.”

Mrs. Browning looks into my eyes. “You’re welcome….And I promise you, Lyla, I’m going to keep helping you.”

“Thank you,” I say, my mind returning to the photograph Polly sent me, just as Mrs. Browning brings it up, too.

“Lyla. You have to come forward about the pictures Finch took. You know that, right?”

I stare at her.

“You have to…for Polly…for yourself. For all the girls who have ever had something like this happen to them.” She pauses, glances away, and then looks back into my eyes. “To us.”

“Us?” I say. She can mean only one thing. But I ask for her confirmation anyway. “Are you one of those girls, Mrs. Browning?”

She doesn’t answer me. She just pulls away from the curb, driving in the direction of my house. At some point, though, she begins to talk, telling me a story of when she was a freshman at Vanderbilt. It is a horrible story about a boy raping her. She tells me that she didn’t report it because she was ashamed and blamed herself. She tells me everything that happened afterward, too. How she broke up with her boyfriend the very next day. How she told only one person—her best friend—but made her promise to keep the secret forever. How she eventually moved on from the heartbreak, meeting, dating, and then marrying Finch’s father. How she desperately wanted to make her life seem and look and be perfect. She talks to me about the dreams that she both had and still has. Dreams I share. She talks about love. And she talks about truth. She talks a lot about truth.

   She doesn’t finish until we get to my street, and I don’t speak until her car is in park again. The first thing I say is for her sake, to try to ease her pain.

“Finch isn’t that bad, Mrs. Browning,” I say.

She looks unconvinced—and so sad.

“I mean…what happened to me isn’t anything like what happened to you.”

“Maybe not,” she says, tearing up again. “But, Lyla, Finch is plenty bad enough.”

I don’t know what to say to this, because I know she’s right. So I just tell her again how much I appreciate her help tonight. How grateful I am for her.

“Oh, sweetie,” she says, leaning over to hug me. “You’re the one who did everything….I’m so proud of you….”

“Thank you,” I say, then ask her again if she thinks Polly’s going to be okay.

“I do,” she says this time. “And Lyla?”

“Yes?” I look at her, waiting.

“I also think you may have saved more than one life tonight.”





When I get home, I hear Finch and Kirk talking and watching television in the family room, sickeningly oblivious to the fact that Polly is fighting for her life. I go straight down the hall to my bedroom and start packing. I grab a small duffel bag, and I put in only essentials: jeans, T-shirts, pajamas, socks, underwear, and toiletries. I then remove my wedding ring, along with all the pieces of jewelry that Kirk has given me, laying them on his nightstand.