Free B0160A5OPY (A) by Joanne Macgregor Page B

alone to do my own thing.
    It suited me to be alone, to hide out from the world, to finish my second-to last year of school with the help of private tutors and tests written under the eagle-eyes of independent examiners at the lawyers’ offices.
    A.S., I never needed to ask my mother that question after all, I got what I wanted in a roundabout way. Who needs an increase in their allowance when you inherit your mother’s entire estate? Beware what you ask the gods, as they may grant it you, and all that. In my crazier moments, I think I may somehow have caused the accident, willed it into existence by wanting more money. Eileen, the therapist I was sent to after the accident and mom’s death to help with the flashbacks and nightmares and anger and grief, had a theory about this.
    “It’s a kind of magical thinking, a misguided attempt to convince yourself that you had some control (even in a negative direction) over a devastating event in which you were actually completely powerless,” she told me.
    I was skeptical. Why would I have wanted to cause the crash?
    “Life’s scary when you realize how much of it is out of your control.”
    That part, I agreed with.
    A.S., I spent a lot of time trying to learn how to live with, and around, and in spite of the empty holes that now took up the space where my mother had been. It amazed me, I mean really and truly staggered me, how life went on all around me even though it felt like my life had stopped. Dogs still barked, phones rang, hamburgers came off the grill in a stream at McDonalds, and people lined up – in the drive-through and at the counter – they lined up to buy the stuff. People actually still wanted to eat.
    How could anyone have an appetite when my mom was gone? Not there in the mornings to nag me awake, or there in the middle of the night when I had the flu, or beside me in the car laughing at a comedy sketch on the radio. Where had she gone? How was it possible that all of her – not just her body, but her stories and memories, had been obliterated? Gone. Gone somewhere I could never get them. Things she had never told me about herself, I would never now know.
    And the world simply marched on as if this was a regular old thing.
    “In the midst of life we are in death,” the minister had said at the funeral.
    But it seemed to me, rather, that in the midst of death we are in life. Somehow, I was undeniably – obscenely even – alive. After a while, I even got hungry again and I ate, staying clear of the tastes that had been Mom’s favorites: sushi and fresh lemonade and homemade mac ‘n cheese. I ate, alone for the most part, looking at the empty chair across the table and thinking of Mom, and thinking, too, of that other family somewhere that was missing a member. His name was Andrew. They didn’t tell me much, but they told me that.
    I had not been well enough to attend the inquest. My witness statement was submitted by affidavit. The lawyers said that the family of the dead man had been there, determined to see justice done. It was, and it wasn’t. My mother was held responsible for causing the accident through driving while using the phone, but she was not around to take her punishment. Or, looking at it another way, she had paid the ultimate price: a death sentence for accidentally taking the life of another. Messrs. Bradley and Martinez tried to protect me from all that, though they reluctantly agreed to pass on a letter of condolence that I wrote to the family. I was allowed to express regret but not to apologize because, according to the lawmen, that would open me to lawsuits. That time is all a bit hazy now, a series of unconnected images remembered through the mists of pain meds and grief. I always knew that one day I would need to meet that family in person, but the thought of it scared me stupid. Turns out, I was right to be afraid.
    So that’s how I’ve spent the nine months since I got the scar – recovering and sleeping and crying and