"I found her on her bed and I knew she was dead. I knew exactly what she'd done. She'd been taking a lot of naps in the middle of the day, but there was something about the way her hand lay on the duvet." I moved my fingers to that position, duplicating what death had looked like to me, fingers relaxed, palm open and vulnerable.
Doug's hand covered my palm.
"And then I touched her and knew she was alive," I told our hands, "so I was relieved. Y can't imagine how relieved I was, and happy. I'm probably
ou laughing on the 911 recording. I felt like the luckiest person alive. I still felt that way when your brother came and I rode with him behind the ambulance to the hospital. It wasn't until later, sitting in the waiting room at the hospital, that I started to get scared my mom might be stuck this way. Oh God."
Even before my face crumpled, Doug shifted forward to give me a hiding place. I sobbed into his FSU T-shirt. Once I started I couldn't stop, and I made a choked noise my mom could probably hear if she were sweeping the paths in the hospital courtyard, pausing over one stepping-stone in particular, sweeping the same stone over and over, spotless.
"Shhhhh," said Doug. He stroked his fingers at the back of my head until his fingertips penetrated the thickness of my hair and he touched my nape. He looped the other arm half around me at an odd angle so he could keep hold of his crutch too. And he kissed the top of my head.
That made me cry even harder. I was caught in the current dragging me along the ocean floor. I struggled to the surface to gasp, "Why did you do this to me?"
"Shhhhh. I just wanted to make sure you're okay."
I cried for a long time. Every few minutes I'd pull away from him, sniffle, and try to dry up. Then I'd look up at his face, the tears in his eyes, and I'd lose it again. At least no one stared at me. The parking lot was empty except for us and Officer Fox, and anyway someone bawling their eyes out was probably an hourly occurrence outside the mental hospital. All this time Doug worked his fingers in circles at the back of my neck.
I took one final sniff and exhaled, exhausted but safe for now. We slid back onto Officer Fox's hood and held hands.
I stared straight ahead at the low brick building that gave away nothing. "What do I do now?"
"Y wait," Doug said.
"I did that already," I sighed. "I'm not allowed to visit her, but I've known since she got here that she could call me whenever she felt ready. She hasn't called. She's only come to my swim meet and freakishly pulled me out of the water and shrieked like the mother of Grendel."
"Hm." Doug laughed the smallest laugh. "Now that they know what's wrong with her, maybe things will be different." He squeezed my hand.
I wondered which window of the hospital was hers. Whether she had a front window and could see me right now. Whether she had a window at all. "What were the people at the swim meet saying about her?"
"What you'd expect." With both hands on my shoulders, he turned me toward him and shook me a little. "Zoey, a lot of people didn't know. No one on the swim team knew. They were"--he chuckled humorlessly--"surprised. But your mom is a public defender. She worked at the courthouse with fifty people. She's been missing for more than a week. People were going to find out. Y dad could threaten to have Cody fired all day, but he never could have
our contained this. Now you know people know. That's the only change. Y and your dad never had control over the information. Y only had control over the
ou ou illusion that you had control. And if the illusion is all you want, you might as well be crazy."
I rubbed my forehead, which had begun to throb. I'd forgotten to take painkillers.
"It's not the end of the world, Zoey. Y eah, it will be hard for her to go back to work with everyone in town knowing what happened, but what else is she going to do? And she'll get through it. In three years it will be almost like it never happened."
"It will?" I asked, because I suspected that he wasn't talking about my mother anymore. He was talking about coming back from juvie.
Then I glanced at my watch. "Oh, look. My dad just got married." I'd kept Officer Fox from his duties long enough. I asked Doug, "Are you riding back to town with your brother? I can give you a ride instead."
His thumbs moved on my shoulders. "Sure. But you don't have to take me straight home. We could hang out."
I took a long breath, thinking over how to phrase this carefully. After everything he'd done for me tonight, I didn't want to piss him off.
Before I could speak, he let me go. "Y ou're going to Brandon's, aren't you."
I knew it didn't make sense to Doug. It didn't really make sense to me either, except Brandon was my good friend from before all this happened. "I need to know whether we're still together or he's too horrified."
"Can't you just call him or text him or something?" Doug grumbled.
"No, I can't tell anything from that. I can't see."
He laughed shortly. "Y can't see anyway."
I whacked him lightly on the chest. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"Y just want to go parking with him," Doug accused me.
"Well, what if I do?"
Well, what if I did?
Doug held his arms out toward the Benz: Be my guest.
"Coming with?" I asked. I wished he would come with me, just ride back to town with me so we could talk and make this better.
He shook his head.
I slid off the hood and prodded his good knee with my hip. "Don't be mad."
He shrugged and looked away from me, at the moon rising over the mental hospital. It was almost full, missing just a sliver.
I rounded the police car and peeked through the open driver's side window to thank Officer Fox for all his help. He was snoring.
Wishing that something else would happen, that Doug would change my mind, even insult me to draw this out a little longer, I walked slowly through the silence to the Benz and slipped inside. My mom hadn't been wearing perfume but I smelled her anyway, something I recognized beyond her usual soap and shampoo, which she wouldn't have at the mental hospital. The scent of my mother. I turned the key in the ignition.
Nothing.
I was going crazy. I probably couldn't tie my own shoes anymore either. I took the key out, put it back in, turned it.
Nothing. No dash lights, no radio, definitely no engine.
Looking over at me, Doug knocked on the hood of the police car to wake up his brother.
***
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER OFFICER FOX STRAIGHTENED from peering into the engine and let the hood of the Benz fall back into place. "Only thing I can tell you is, my friend owns the garage around the corner. He works late. I'll call him and ask him to tow it for you. Maybe it's something simple." When I nodded, he went back to the police car and spoke into his radio.