Page 31 of The Delivery

“Know who else eats salmon?”

Rebecca makes a claw hand, reaches back to scour the air. “Raaar!”

“Yup.” Maddy giggles. “Grizzly bears.”

Chapter 25

Singing along to Hamilton at the top of their lungs, they are badly out of key, which is the only way Rebecca can sing. Since there were no chores to get home to, Rebecca brought Maddy to the mall after dinner to get frozen yogurt, and even got them matching heart necklaces, which they now wear as a celebratory punctuation to the evening. Turning onto their street, Rebecca spots the flashing emergency lights, and her stomach drops through the bottom of her seat.

Fighting through shock, she notes the ambulance and cop cars are not at their house but next door.

“Mommy, what’s happening?”

“I don’t know. Looks like something’s wrong at Jackson’s house.”

“Did someone sue him into the ground?”

But she cannot answer. The strobing blues and reds bring her back to the last time an ambulance came to their block. She remembers vividly being jangled around in the rear as they drove her off, the wand pressing through the cool ultrasound gel on her belly, the terrible sound of just one beating heart inside her.

She eases up to the curb in front of Jackson’s. EMTs are pacing around, on their radios, looking grave. The cops are in a loose semicircle, standing guard over something. Through the bodies and vehicles, she notices a toppled ladder but can’t make out anything else.

“Maddysaurus, wait in here, okay?”

The nickname slips out, but Maddy does not object.

Rebecca parks and unbuckles, sliding out. Neighbors are at their windows, making calls, filming on iPhones.

“Hello, hi?” Rebecca says, approaching. “Is everything okay?”

“Are you the wife?” a cop asks.

“Oh, thank God,” an EMT says. “We got his wife!”

“No, I’m not his—”

But already she is being ushered forward into the inner sanctum. At first she struggles to register what is lying on the ground. It isn’t shaped like a man, but a collection of wrong angles.

Jackson lies grotesquely contorted, limbs bent this way and that, his head at an unnatural tilt on his neck. But that isn’t the worst part.

The worst part is that he is staring straight up at her.

He blinks rapidly. A line of drool runs down the side of his cheek.

Her breath catches in her throat, and she has to try twice before she can unstick it.

“He’s in bad shape,” the EMT says. “Do you want to say anything to him?”

Rebecca finally locates her voice. “I’m not his wife. I’m just . . . just the neighbor.”

Jackson glares up at her. One cheek is mashed to the earth, the visible eye bloodshot and bulging. Spittle flecks his lips. His lower lip quivers. He is irreversibly shattered in so many ways, like a car-struck dog that must be put down.

Rebecca can hardly make out anything over the rush of white noise in her ears. Her heart thumps against her ribs, fluttering her sweater. She’s amazed everyone else doesn’t hear it too.

She is clutching herself across her stomach, one hand clawing at her neck. She feels a tug—the necklace giving way?—but she cannot move her gaze from Jackson. It’s like he is impaling her with that one eye.

And he looks angry. No, not angry. Accusatory.

He tries to speak, but all that comes out is a garbled mess. That continuous cord of drool keeps spilling from his lips.