Free Blame by Nicole Trope

mean, Caro—I’m just not sure what this has to do with—’
    ‘It has everything to do with it. You want to know what happened but I’m pretty sure you’re not going to believe me, so I’m going to tell you from the beginning and that way, when I get to the accident, you’ll actually understand what I’m saying . . . is that okay with you?’
    ‘Yes, yes, that’s fine. But I’m going to ask you again if you’re okay. You really don’t look very well.’
    Caro feels her fists clench again. She would like to just get up and walk out, and keep walking until she reaches somewhere far away from here and the fucked-up mess her life has become but she knows—just like she knew that she would have to clean up the broken mug—she doesn’t have that choice. She is a mother, and even though Lex hates her right now, she is still her mother and bound to her forever, and being a mother means that you can never run away or leave the mess for someone else.
    ‘Susan . . . can I call you Susan? Yes, Susan, you’re right. I’m not very well at all. I haven’t had a drink today and I really need one,’ Caro says, omitting to mention her vodka and orange this morning. She had showered and brushed her teeth before she arrived at the police station, so knows there is no trace of the alcohol on her, although Geoff tells her that it comes out of her skin. ‘You’re starting to smell like an old wino,’ had been the exact words he used to Carothe week before. ‘Sometimes I can smell you before I even walk into a room.’
    ‘Sometimes I hate you before you even walk into a room,’ Caro had replied. When she finally sobered up enough to remember them, she had hated herself for saying those words; but then, she always hated herself for the things she said when she was drunk, or maybe she just always hated herself.
    Before Susan can say anything else, Caro raises her hand. ‘I want to say this now, and I’m sure you know already, that I was not drunk on the night of the accident. I’d had a drink or two, that’s true, but I wasn’t over the limit.’
    ‘Caro—Mrs Harman—I don’t want to upset you, but I think you may need to face the fact that you were, indeed, over the limit at the time of the accident.’ Susan says this in her most reasonable voice, like she is explaining something to an eight-year-old having a tantrum, and Caro is back to hating her again.
    ‘You don’t know that!’ she yells, knowing that she’s basically admitting her guilt by getting upset. ‘Do you understand, you don’t know that! The blood tests haven’t come back yet. If they had, and if you had conclusive proof that I had been drunk, you would simply have arrested me, and you haven’t done that. I’m here of my own free will because this was no ordinary accident, and you need to let me explain it before you simply decide that I was drunk.’
    ‘Please don’t shout at us, Mrs Harman. It really benefits no one at all,’ says Susan.
    ‘I need you to understand, that’s all. Since the accident, I haven’t driven at all and I know that my drinking has increased. I know that but . . .’ Caro thinks about her car, parked far away from the station. It’s not really her car, it’s a rental. The police still have her car, although she’s not sure what they think they’re going to find. It was barely even dented and won’t need to be fixed. Geoff hadn’t wanted to get her a rental car but Caro had insisted.
    ‘What if I need to get to Lex? What if something goes wrong while you’re at work?’
    ‘Caro, your mother and sister are picking up Lex from school, and I’m dropping her at school. You need to just take some time.’
    ‘I need a car, Geoff,’ she had said, and so he had relented and rented her one. It has mostly sat outside the house, waiting for her to drive it. Today, she had wanted to drive Lex to school, to take back some control before heading to the police station, to try to restore some sense of normalcy, and