“Shh.” He stroked my hair. “Don’t go there, Ara. Just don’t let yourself go there.”
I studied the pattern of his denim jeans and the contrast of my white knee, nestled right into the underside of his upper thigh. He was slowly moving closer and closer, and I only felt safe and closed-in. “I never believed in God. My mom tried to make me. I just never really believed. But, in that moment, when everything was dead quiet and I couldn’t see my mom, didn’t know where Harry was, I prayed. I leaned on my elbows to hold my weight, clasped my hands together around all the blood and glass, and begged God to let Harry be okay. But he…”
“He’s okay now, Ara.”
“How can you say that? Harry was my world, David. Ever since he was born, all I ever did was talk about him, play with him…and…how can you think it’s okay that he's dead?”
“I didn’t say that. I said he’s not suffering anymore.”
I looked down at my lap, sniffling. “I didn’t mean for any of this. I didn’t mean for them to die.”
“Ara, of course you didn’t, sweetheart.” He wrapped me in his arms, turning me slightly so my shoulder rested against his chest. “Of course you didn’t.”
“But even still, it was my fault, and I know I shouldn’t think like that, I really do. But I feel like a murderer. I—” I looked back on the memory of the empty backseat and the feeling of everything being gone. It was like lying flat on a steel bed, having someone hit your soul with a rubber mallet, sending it in black splatters everywhere; each piece reaching out to something tingly, making you shake. I had no control. I didn’t know where Harry was and couldn’t get free to make him okay. “He was just a baby. What if he was awake? What if he was cold and wondering why we’d left him there? What if he wanted to go home?” I burst into tears. “Oh, David. I just wanna take him home.”
“My love. I wish I could make you better. God knows, I do. But, I know, so much better than anyone, what that feels like—to lose something precious—and that there’s nothing I can even say.”
I nodded. “I just…how can he be gone? I was there. I was squeezing my mom’s hand when he was born. I was the first person to hold him. I suggested his name, David. How could all that be gone?”
“Sometimes, my love, life just doesn’t make sense.”
“I know. It’s like…It’s like creating something; like crafting it and painting it, then, in one stupid move, dropping it to the ground.”
He rubbed gentle circles over my back. “I know, but I also know that by talking to me, you’re taking the first step toward healing.”
“I don’t know about that, David. I just feel like I’ve been lashed with something big and hard, and I can’t make that go away.” I touched my chest where it always hurt. “I tried to tell myself it wasn’t my fault. I tried to make amends, pray for forgiveness, but it doesn’t matter what I do. This pain, it doesn’t go. I feel choked-up and so damn sorry.”
“You know you don’t need to be sorry, Ara. You know this wasn’t your fault.”
My face crumpled. I truly wished I believed that. “I’ve been through every one of Vicki’s books—trying to find a way to make sense of the guilt. And I know all the facts. But science doesn’t measure grief, David. It can’t, and it can’t make sense of it. In my heart—” I touched the base of my ribs. “Way down here—I think, maybe my soul, I can’t put the guilt away.”
“Time, Ara.” He hugged me close again. “Time is all that can heal.”
“But I get so angry. Sometimes I really think I’m okay, and then I get so angry at myself. I hate myself for making that phone call—for going out that night. I just—sometimes the anger is so much stronger than the grief.”
“What are you angry about, Ara—just that you called her?”
I shook my head. “So many things. I think the powerlessness, you know, the feeling like I had no control, and that it was my life. My goddamn life, but I was a kid; just a kid who had to do as she was told.”
“What are you talking about?”
I bit my teeth together, folding forward as the feelings I’d pushed down rose up in me again, making everything tight in my core. “They took me away; they came, and they leaned into that car and all they said was this one’s alive. Then they took me away. They wouldn’t let me go; wouldn’t let me find Harry. I was fine. I wasn’t hurt. Just glass and cuts, but I was fine. If I could’ve—if they just let me look. I might’ve found him.”
“Did—did they ever find him?”
I nodded. “They found his seat on the side of the road. Harry wasn’t in it.”
He stiffened. “What happened to him?”
“They wouldn’t tell me. But I heard a nurse say the cop was having counselling—the one that found him.”
He clicked his tongue and squeezed me tighter. “You shouldn’t have had to hear that.”
“I know. And it made me so mad. I mean, I was over sixteen; legally old enough to make my own medical decisions. Legally old enough to be told what was going on. But they stuck me in that bed, drugged up on who knows what—left alone until my dad arrived—from America. They let him tell me my mom was dead. They let him tell me I’d been horrifically scarred. And he didn’t even say it. It was the way he looked at me, David. He hadn’t seen me in nearly a year, and the first time he laid eyes on me was when my face had been ripped apart. What do you think I saw in him that morning?”
David’s throat shifted. “I know. But you’re safe now.”
“I don’t want to be safe, though. I feel like I owe a debt.”
He tilted my face upward with both hands. “A debt?”
“I’m not stupid. Like I said, I know it’s not my fault. I know it was an accident. But I feel like they’re coming for me. Like I gave my family to them, and now they want me.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. The other side—death. Karma, maybe. I don’t know.”
David’s teeth slid slowly over each other as his jaw came forward and his eyes flicked to the place of deep thoughts. “Do you—do you ever think of taking those matters into your own hands?”
“Mm-hm. Like, maybe I could trade places. You know—offer myself in exchange. If I could go back, maybe I could—”