Page 36 of You Know Why

Two tiny pulsations resonate, keeping time with my own, and I drag in a breath, expecting the simple action to hurt, shocked when it doesn’t. I have to breathe again for them. They lived inside me. They need me now. I can’t leave them behind.

The gasp of air fills me, almost like coming to the surface of a deep lake after being held underwater. I breathe hard, panting, infusing my body with oxygen.

The panic attack is receding. I can think rationally again.

A car swings onto the street, its high beams on. I realize I’m standing on the side of the road. Eden’s house is behind me. The two women, Eden and Detective Lee, stand in the glowing yellow doorway, mouths open, hands up, reaching for me, and the car is screeching to a halt, but slides on what must be black ice and goes sideways before straightening out again.

A fraction of a second more . . . I congratulate myself on stopping in time. My God, if I had given in, run one more step, that car would have hit me.

I turn, and something gives. My ankle buckles. The whole world tilts on its axis.

Shrill yells, skidding tires, the horn . . . Impact.

Light in my eyes.

Sharp pinch on the inside of my elbow.

Cold air hissing up my nose.

“Does this hurt?” “This?” “This?”

Hands, everywhere.

Darkness.

Destiny Is Calling

Eden

All is chaos, but in slow motion. The body flying, the SUV careening away, the sound Brooklyn makes when she lands. It is sickening, the crunch. The screams from my throat are so familiar, so like the night Chloe died. I haven’t felt this terror in so long, and now . . . God, the blood is everywhere.

I have to force myself down the drive, but as I draw closer, it’s like a magnet is guiding my hand. There is so much blood, and I need to feel for her pulse. She is broken, she is bleeding, she is so hurt—

“Don’t touch her,” Theresa says. “Her neck might be broken.”

I snatch my hand back. Theresa is already on her phone with emergency services. She is calm, collected, with red cheeks from the cold and a distant look in her eyes. I’ve seen that look before. She has switched off her emotions, become an automaton who can handle these epic tragedies. She did it at my sister’s crime scene. At the time, I thought her cold. Now I know it’s a coping mechanism.

She’s relaying all the information, and it doesn’t take long for us to hear the ambulance. The blood keeps pulsing onto the ground. Theresa puts her jacket over Brooklyn’s body. The ambulance roars around the corner, flakes of snow dancing in the headlights.

Slow motion goes into overdrive, everything happening at once. Blood. Screams. Holding back the children, who are desperately trying to reach their mother. Theresa giving the particulars to the police who are here now, too. The firefighters pulling away, and then, as suddenly as it began, it’s over.

The lights of the ambulance fade, the police report is finished, and I’m left standing on the porch in the freezing cold with two hysterical children and a grizzled policewoman who looks as alarmed as I know she feels. There is blood on the street, thick and coagulating in the frozen darkness. The neighbors are gawking. The past half hour is a blur. The impact bangs through my head on repeat. The scream—was that from me, or Theresa? Hurrying to the curb, calling 9-1-1, feeling for a pulse. I felt nothing; Theresa said it was thready but there.

The SUV that hit Brooklyn is long gone; they didn’t stop, just screeched around the corner and slid across into the curb, smashed into her body, flinging it across the driveway like a rag doll, then gunned it and took off down the road. All I saw was the woman going down, a look of surprise, almost delight, on her face.

I told the police four times that I didn’t know how Brooklyn fell. Maybe she tripped. She ran out of the house like her hair was on fire, in a blind panic, but I thought—thought—she was turning back toward the house when she went down.

I’ll be honest, it didn’t look good. She must be dead, though the EMTs were working on her frantically when the doors slammed closed and the ambulance squealed away. They arrived so quickly—that’s her only chance.

God, so much blood.

Dead or alive, one thing is for certain.

I now have Brooklyn’s children.

Andrew’s children.

This day. This insane, awful, wonderful day.