Free Red Hook Road by Ayelet Waldman Page B

to the dirt, and ground it out with the pointed toe of her shoe. “I got to get my girls home,” she said. “So I’m going to go with them”—she stuck a thumb in Iris and Daniel’s direction—“if that’s all right with you.”
    “No matter,” Jane said.
    “You want me to take Samantha home with me, or are you going to pick her up on your way?”
    “You take her. Matt, you go, too.”
    “That’s all right, Mum. I’ll stay with you.” It was obvious from everything about him—his tone of voice, the expression on his face, his slumped shoulders and back—that staying at the scene of the accident was the last thing he wanted to do.
    “I don’t want you here. Go.”
    “Mum.”
    “Go!” she shouted.
    Matt looked at Daniel, his eyebrows raised, his shoulders shrugged as if to say, What am I supposed to do now? When no reply was forthcoming, he said, “All right, Mum. I’ll be waiting for you at home. Don’t stay too long.” Then he called out to the sheriff, “You won’t let her stay too long, will you?”
    “Don’t worry, son,” the sheriff said. “The truck will be here soon.”
    Matt crammed his hands into his pockets and followed Maureen, who was trudging back to the car. Daniel, his arm around Iris’s shoulders, tried to lead her away.
    “Wait,” Iris said. Her voice was calm despite her tears. “Officer?”
    “Yes, ma’am?”
    “Who was riding in the other car?” Iris said.
    “Excuse me, ma’am?”
    “The other car. The SUV.” She pointed at the wreckage. It was just possible to see beneath the charring that the truck had once been white. “Who was driving it?”
    “Man from Bucksport way. I’ve got a couple of deputies heading out to tell his family.”
    “Was he drunk?”
    “We won’t know until the autopsy. But if I had to guess, I’d say probably not.”
    “And the limo driver? Was he drunk?”
    Daniel said, “You know he wasn’t.”
    “So what happened? Why did they crash?” Iris said.
    Sheriff Paige said, “The limo driver probably had the sun in his eyes, maybe took the turn too wide. The way I read it, the Explorer swerved out of the way and got its wheels up on those rocks and that’s what flipped it. Unstable as hell, those trucks. Doesn’t take much for them to turn turtle.” He looked at Matt. “That about what you saw, son?”
    “Yeah,” Matt said. “It just flipped and rolled right over the top of the limo.”
    Daniel pulled Iris close. “Let’s go,” he said.
    When they reached the car she paused and looked back. The fire in the SUV was finally out and only a small plume of black smoke still rose from the car’s broken carcass. There was no moon, and so the cove and the trees had faded into the darkness. The two banks of spotlights each sent out a sharply delineated bend of bright white light. One strip of light illuminated the SUV, the other the limousine, which was no longer in water but lodged in mud, the ebbing tide having begun to recede from the shore. The two zones of light overlapped in the middle of the road. In that small, brilliantly lit space, Jane stood facing the wrecks, her broad back to Iris. Her arms and hands hung limply by her sides. A gust of breeze sent the hem of her dress swirling around her legs.
    Jane stood in that little island of light like a sentinel, a lighthouse on an uninhabited, forbidding coast. Iris gripped the car door with her handsand stared at Jane. She had never seen anyone look so completely alone. How could they drive away and leave her there, enclosed in the husk of her grief? Iris started to call to her, but just then Jane bent down and picked something up off the ground. With a jerk of her strong arm she sent the rock arcing high toward the limousine. It landed with a crack on the shredded roof. Iris jumped at the sound.
    “Iris,” Daniel said, gently pressing down on her shoulders, maneuvering her into the car. “Let’s go home.”
    Jane bent down for another rock, and Iris quickly ducked into