Free Tell Me One Thing by Deena Goldstone Page A

realize. She’s focused on Jamie, on having him understand, on saving his life. The ArtWalk is right in front of them, down about a block. The street and sidewalk are packed with people, walking toward it. Families with children in strollers. People who’ve come with their dogs. There’s a live band at the corner of Fir and India, and their amplified sound blasts out into the twilight air.
    “Ellen!” he yells above the music. He wants her to slow down, but he’s not sure she can hear him.
    “You have to listen to me, Jamie!” Her voice is urgent. She’s searching his face to see how far she can push.
    “Look!” He’s pointing at the people in front of them clogging the street, but she’s too intent upon her mission. She will save her brother. She won’t be derailed.
    “Your life is at stake!” She’s screaming now over the music, her body taut, rising up from the seat, her foot pressing down on the accelerator, but she doesn’t realize. The car is speeding. The streets are clogged with pedestrians.
    “Stop!” he screams at her. “Stop, Ellen, stop!”
    He grabs the wheel, but it’s too late. The first body hits the car with a sickening thud. The next with a scream that pierces his heart and shatters it.
    Ellen slams on the brakes and the car comes to a shuddering stop. She stares with horror at the carnage in front of her, unable to move. Jamie pushes open the passenger door and gets out. To see what happened, to help if he can. But it’s too late, he sees.
Oh God, it’s too late
. The damage has already been done.

Aftermath
              HAVING SPENT MOST OF HIS FORTY-THREE years intimately acquainted with the notion that the sins of the father are visited upon the son, Jamie O’Connor now contemplates the sins of the sister. Deep in the middle of the night, as he drives from his home to University Hospital, he tries to determine what his responsibility is to carry those.
    Twenty-four days ago his sister Ellen plowed into a crowd of people walking to a street fair. She was driving his car. He was there, sitting in the passenger’s seat. Should he hold himself culpable for her act? For not insisting when she picked him up from school that Friday afternoon that she slide over and let him drive? Should he have seen she was in no shape to be behind the wheel?
    But she seemed fine
, Jamie argues with himself. By now, he’s had this internal debate too many times to count. It’s boring and compelling and urgent all at the same time.
She drove with confidence. Like a pro. She could have given a master class on how to navigate the I-5 Freeway
, he reminds himself yet again.
    All right, then, maybe he can’t fault himself for not takingthe wheel at the beginning of the ride, but what about once she became agitated? Once he saw her knuckles whiten, her hands clutch the steering wheel too tightly? What about when he saw her back press up against the driver’s seat as if she wanted nothing more than to burst through her skin?
    But how do you do that? How do you force a person to stop a car safely? When I yelled at her to stop, did that just make things worse?
    A groan escapes from deep within him and Jamie shakes his head slightly, alone in his car. What part of this disaster was his fault? What should he have seen that he missed? How much of the carnage could he have realistically prevented? There are no answers to his questions. He knows that now. It is the weight of this burden that propels him through the streets of San Diego.
    It seemed to Jamie for weeks after the accident that there was nothing else on the local television news or in the papers—“Sister of San Diego Teacher Crashes Car into ArtWalk Crowd.” Several people had whipped out their cell phones at the first horrified scream, and their grainy videos were played on the networks obsessively. Various police officers were interviewed on camera. The accident-reconstruction people brought out their renderings of tire tracks and skid