The Art of Losing(3)

Dad suddenly turned mid-stride and pushed through the swinging door. I could only assume he’d lost patience and gone to check on Audrey’s surgery. A few nurses trailed after him like sympathetic baby ducks.

I stood and traced Dad’s path across the small room. When he pushed back through the door a few minutes later, I froze.

“I finally got an update,” he said. He spoke in a monotone. “Audrey is still in the OR. She’s got swelling in her brain and it’s pressing against her skull. They’re draining some of the fluid so they can see what kind of damage there may be. She also has a broken arm that needs to be set and a fractured sternum and cracked ribs from the seat belt, but that will heal.”

That all sounded like good news, relatively speaking. The tightness in my chest eased slightly. But then he turned to me.

“Harley, there’s something I have to tell you,” he said softly, putting both hands on my shoulders in a classic I’ve-got-bad-news stance. Or maybe he was trying to restrain me in case I tried to run.

“Mike was driving Audrey home tonight. The police said he was drunk, well over the limit.”

My knees wobbled. I dropped back into the chair.

“He ran a red light,” Dad continued, “and another car hit the passenger side where Audrey was sitting.” He squatted down to look me in the eye for this last part. He was too preoccupied to remember that he had no cartilage in one of his knees from a college baseball injury. I heard it crack as he went down.

“Is Mike okay?” I asked. For a hateful second, I hoped that the answer would be no.

Dad nodded. “I just checked on him. He’s in the ER, conscious but still drunk.” His voice hardened. “He has a few bruises, a possible concussion and whiplash, but he’ll be fine. He won’t even have much of a hangover after the IV fluids he’s getting.”

I glanced at Mom, who met my gaze over the magazine she held in one hand, a ballpoint BIC in the other. She was doing the crossword puzzle in pen. And it wasn’t even an easy, celebrity-centric People crossword.

Mom loved a good puzzle. She was always so satisfied when numbers added up, whether in a spreadsheet or sudoku. You could see the joy on her face when she filled in the last letter of a crossword or snapped the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle into its place. Puzzling was where she found peace, she said.

It was half of the reason she loved her job as an accountant so much. Her main clients were a handful of local businesses—boutique stores, mostly, which was perfect for her. She did the books from home, but she got serious discounts in the stores. She had this amazing talent where she could take one expensive piece from a boutique, add some cheap basics and accessories from T.J. Maxx, and end up looking like she should be in a glossy magazine spread about chic suburban moms.

Even now, with minutes to get dressed in the middle of the night, her long-sleeved striped cotton shirt and pressed khakis would look completely appropriate if she was posed on the deck of a sailboat. Not in the waiting room of a hospital while her youngest daughter fought for her life.

But her face was white with rage, her lips a tight, pale line across her face. For the first time I could remember, it was a reflection of mine.

Mike had called my phone that night just as the police called the landline. I ignored it because I thought he was calling to apologize—and I didn’t want to hear it—but also because just after my phone went silent, Dad tore into my room and told me to get in the car. Now I had to wonder what Mike would have said if I’d answered.

I turned back to Dad. “So Audrey is in surgery, possibly brain-damaged, because my boyfriend drove drunk and nearly got her killed?” I asked him.

My hands were suddenly fists. My heart throbbed so hard that a rushing noise filled my ears. How dare Mike even think of getting into a car with my sister when he’d been drinking? Like he hadn’t done enough damage for one night?

Dad nodded once, his jaw clenched.

“And he’s going to be fine?” I didn’t wait for his response. “That asshole,” I said. My fingernails pressed into the palms of my hands. “How drunk is he right now?”

“Why?” Dad asked warily.

“Because I want to scream at him. I want to punch him in the fucking teeth,” I said. “But I want him to remember it.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Dad said, even though he looked like he wanted to do the same. “The police are there now, talking to him about the accident.”

Even through my anger, I couldn’t suppress an innate flicker of worry. I hated Mike even more for that.

Just then, Aunt Tilly shoved through the door to the waiting room. Before she could say anything, my mom stood to meet her and collapsed into her arms, sobbing. She’d been keeping it together as much as she could up until that point, but somehow seeing her older sister gave Mom the permission to release her fear and worry and rage.

Aunt Tilly was a therapist who specialized in patients with agoraphobia, so unlike my mom, who was constantly pushing me to get out of the house and take an “active role in society,” Tilly let me be who I was: a comics-obsessed girl who rarely left the comfort of her bedroom.

I felt sorry for my thirteen-year-old cousin Spencer, though. Aunt Tilly could spot a lie before it even came out of my mouth. His teen years were going to be hell.

But she was handy in a crisis, especially when my mom—and I—needed her.