This is What Goodbye Looks Like (6 page)

“You came!” Brie says, offering me a wide smile. She grabs the guys by their wrists and tugs them toward me, and the way they both roll their eyes tells me they’re used to her pushiness. “This is Landon,” she says, poking a finger at the tall guy’s chest. “He’s being nice for once and letting us use his car today. And this—” she pokes at the other guy, “—is Cameron. He’s the reason Landon usually never lets us use his car.”

“Genetic klutziness is a real thing,” Cameron says, giving Brie a mock-offended look. “It’s totally not my fault I always spill stuff in there.”

Landon scoffs. “Genetic stupidity is more like it. Who drinks cherry soda in a car with beige upholstery?”

“Please, just admit it already,” Cameron says, flicking away Landon’s comment with a wave of his hand. “You totally enjoy having a backseat that looks like a murder scene.” He suddenly looks at me, seeming to notice I’m there for the first time. “Nice to meet you, Lea.”

“Nice to meet you both,” I murmur.

“Landon, do you want to bring the car around?” Brie asks.

“No,” he says, but Maddie shoves at his arm and says, “Yes.” Landon’s forehead crinkles in a pout, but she just points across the parking lot, where a dark grey SUV sits. “Go get your car before we all freeze to death out here,” Maddie says. “I assure you that having a girlfriend with permanently blue lips would
not
be hot.”

Landon gives a reluctant sigh and heads off toward his car. Brie offers me a sheepish smile and says, “We should be leaving in just a minute, don’t worry. We’re just waiting on one more friend.”

“It’s probably going to be more like a century,” Hannah grumbles, rubbing at the goosebumps on her arms. I raise an eyebrow at her, and she quickly explains, “We’re pretty sure our friend never learned to tell time. He’s late to everything.”

She’s barely finished her sentence when a voice calls out, “Sorry I’m late!”

Every reasonable thought in my head disappears at the sound of his voice. It’s slightly different now—deep and strong, instead of choked with grief and dread. But the smooth tone is mostly the same as I remember it, and my gut twists painfully as a new set of footsteps approaches.

A sharp noise breaks through the sudden quiet, and I flinch, thinking for a split second that it’s the sound of tearing metal. But then I realize it’s the bark of a dog, and I squeeze my eyes shut.

I can’t do this. I have to do this, but I can’t do this.

“Seth!” Brie calls out. “Dude, you’re totally late. Again.”

He makes a low, disbelieving noise, something between a scoff and a chuckle. Now he sounds even closer. I take a deep breath and clench my hand tighter around my cane. If I don’t turn around and greet him, it’ll be obvious that I have an issue with him, but I can’t get my body to move.

“I’m
fashionably
late,” Seth tells Brie. “There’s a difference.”

“Yeah, there is,” Hannah says. “One is on time, and one isn’t. And only one is annoying, too.”

“Agreed,” he says. “You punctual people get so irritating.”

Hannah tosses a curse at him, but laughs to soften the impact. Then the footsteps stop, and something cold and wet nudges my wrist, right where my mitten ends. At first, I think someone’s pressing snow there, but then I feel a warm tongue lick the same spot.

I jerk back just as I hear Seth say, “Koda! You know I can hear that, you bad girl. No licking.” Then he says to the others, “Who’s she licking? She never does that to you guys.”

“That’s Lea,” Brie says. “She’s the new senior we got. Lea, this is Seth Ashbury. Seth, this is Lea Holder.”

My heart pounds a million beats per minute, and the adrenaline makes me strong enough to peel my eyes open. Looking down, I find myself staring right at Seth’s seeing eye dog. She looks just like she did at the trial, a regal German Shepherd mix with a glossy coat and wagging tail.

The dog nudges at me again with her nose, clearly expecting me to pet her. But instead I focus on the light-weight vest strapped to her back, letting my eyes follow the slim handle attached to it until I find myself staring at the guy gripping it.

Seth Ashbury stands right there, right in front of me. He also looks the same as he did during the trial—tall with lithe muscle, shaggy blond hair, and tan skin. He’s the spitting image of his older brother, right down to the sharp jawline and the way one side of his mouth lifts slightly higher than the other as he smiles.

A slim pair of sunglasses hides his blind eyes, but I’m betting they’re the same color as his brother’s. Parker’s eyes were shockingly blue, like a tropical sea, and their bright color contrasted sickeningly against the blood that dripped down his forehead after the accident.

I’m frozen. Maddie and Hannah giggle, probably thinking I’ve been stunned by Seth’s good looks. I’m sure any normal girl would consider him gorgeous, but I haven’t been normal in months, and nothing about Seth is beautiful to me. He’s just a reminder of crunching metal and squealing tires and my sister’s scream, her scream that seemed to echo and never, never, never end...

“Hey,” Seth says, holding out a hand in my general direction. “Nice to meet you.”

This is the part where I need to slap on a smile, recover from my brief awkwardness, and let myself go into robot mode. Shut down my emotions, boot up automatic functions. I reach my hand forward a little, and for a single moment, I think I’m going to pull this off.

But then I notice the slim chain around his neck, the one that has a small, silver medallion dangling from the end. The same medallion his brother was wearing when he died just feet away from me.

My gut twists, and my hand falls away, and I vomit all over his shoes.

Chapter Six

It was the second day of the trial, and Whittaker was still sitting in his chair at the prosecutor’s desk, which seemed strange. In all those
Law and Order
episodes, the prosecutors always paced back and forth like some sort of wildcat waiting to strike. But Whittaker must have realized I could barely focus on words, let alone a moving figure, so he remained leaning back in his chair and questioned me from there.

“And so tell me, Miss Alessio,” he said, like he always did before a big question. “What exactly happened while you were driving down Greystone Road?”

“I was in a car accident, sir.”

“Yes, you’ve said that. But what happened
exactly?
”

“I already told you. My family was driving home from a reunion at my uncle’s house, and we got in an accident.”

He bobbed his head in a slow nod, his beard dipping to touch his chest. “You say ‘we.’ Who is ‘we?’ Only one person was driving, correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And who was driving?”

“Sophia Alessio.”

Whittaker’s eyebrows raised at my use of her full name, but I was too embarrassed to call her “Mom.” It seemed like a stupid emotion, so childish. But I couldn’t stop the shame that coursed through me as I glanced at my mom’s tearful form sitting in the front of the courtroom.

Her dark hair was pulled back into a tight bun, and she wore a conservative navy-blue dress with a white trim along the edges. Just four months ago, she’d worn the same outfit to my cousin’s baptism, and she’d looked stately and beautiful in all the pictures I took at the ceremony. Now the dress was too big for her, the fabric drooping awkwardly where her curves had disappeared. She used to be the stereotypical Spanish mother, always professing the benefits of a big dinner, but she hadn’t eaten a full meal since the accident.

Mom dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, careful not to smear her makeup, and offered me a wobbly smile. I didn’t return it.

“Good,” Whittaker said. “It seems that’s something everyone can agree on. Sophia Alessio was driving. Now, tell me, had your mother had anything to drink at this party?”

“Yes,” I said. “All the adults were drinking.”

“But how much did your mom have? Only as much as the other adults, or more?”

I clamped my hand on the arm of my wheelchair. Pain streaked through my pinky, right where the bone was fractured in the accident. “I think she had more.”

Mom breathed in sharply. She was sitting close enough for the broken little sound to carry, but I refused to look at her again.

“And did she do anything else different from the other adults?” Whittaker asked. “Some people reported there was an argument.”

“She was upset with my uncle. He’d let my little sister help light the barbeque, and my mom didn’t approve of it.”

A murmur went up in the packed seats of the audience. Apparently, the irony of Mom fretting over Camille’s safety wasn’t about to escape them, no matter how tense the courtroom was.

Whittaker folded his broad hands. “So they ended up in a fight.”

“A verbal fight,” I clarified.

“And was this the reason you left the reunion early?”

I nodded and then remembered I had to speak out loud for the court record. “Yes.”

“So on the night of the accident that killed Parker Ashbury, your mother was not only drunk, but also in an agitated state. Is that correct?”

My heart thudded against my chest so fast and hard, I thought it might simply burst. I didn’t respond, pursing my lips and silently waiting for my heart to fail so I could just die and not have to answer any more questions.

But then I heard a muffled sob, low and exhausted and so, so broken. This one came from the opposite side of the courtroom, right where Parker Ashbury’s mother was sitting.

“Yes,” I whispered. “That’s correct.”

Chapter Seven

I spend the weekend recovering from my “stomach flu” and telling Brie that, yes, I’m doing okay, and no, I don’t need any more Tylenol, and yes, I’ve been drinking enough water, and no, I
really
don’t need to see a doctor. If she wasn’t so damn sweet, I’d probably strangle her for being such a mother hen.

Dad calls every day to check on me, but our conversations are as choked and short as usual. I’ve gotten into the habit of calling my brother every evening, but Jeremy never picks up, and the short texts he replies with would be laughable if they didn’t hurt so much.

“In class, can’t talk.”

“Sorry I missed your call, had my phone off.”

“TTYL, cramming for test.”

I want to tell him that I get it, that I understand no college student wants to spend their time dealing with family issues. But, more than that, I want to demand why a degree in Computer Science is more important than his little sister stuck at a new school across the country, and his baby sister stuck in a coma, and his parents stuck in denial about the whole thing.

I spend Sunday evening with my nose buried in my copy of
The Three Musketeers
. I’m supposed to have already read it for my World Lit class, but I’m only halfway finished. After the accident, I started reading a bunch of poetry, since I could follow the short pieces even when I was on painkillers and had crappy concentration. I haven’t touched pain meds in months, but my poetry reading habit has stuck around, and it’s making
The Three Musketeers
seem impossibly long-winded.

I keep my phone beside me, hoping Jeremy will call so I can talk to someone about how anxious I am about school starting tomorrow. But the screen remains blank.

Brie leaves me in peace and stays on her side of the room, absently organizing her already-pristine nail polish collection as she chats with her mom. She talks with her family about once a day, using her iPad to video chat with them. I slip on my headphones on so I can listen to music and drown out their conversation, but then I can’t bring myself to start any of my playlists. Brie’s mom is telling her about her little brother’s favorite new stuffed toy, and it’s a meandering, mindless conversation with little point. But it’s exactly the sort of talk I miss.

It’s only when Brie waves at me that I realize I haven’t turned the page of my book in probably ten minutes. I take my headphones off, and she gestures to her iPad.

“Want to come meet my family?” she asks.

I almost say “no”—I know exactly what I’ve lost, and I don’t need to have it flaunted in my face. But Brie’s smile is eager, and I don’t have the heart to tell her to keep her family to herself. So I nod, and she brings the iPad over to me, letting me stay on my bed so I don’t have to limp over to her side of the room.

I do my best to plaster a smile on my face and wave at her mom through the screen. “Hi,” I say. “I’m Lea.”

Brie is the spitting image of her mom—same heart-shaped face, same blue eyes, same exuberant voice as she introduces herself as Charlotte and gushes about how nice it is to meet me. In the background, I can see the living room of Brie’s home, with chic furniture and pale yellow walls. Charlotte disappears from the camera’s view for a minute, but quickly returns with a pudgy toddler boy in her arms.

“This is Bailey,” she says, and the boy starts frantically waving at the camera with one hand and flapping around the other, which he’s using to grip a stuffed, polka-dotted elephant. Charlotte sets him down in front of the screen, and he keeps waving as he leans in closer.