Consenting Adults (8 page)

“Charlotte?” Deb’s voice seemed miles away. Charlotte could
hardly hear anything above the blood pulsing through the veins in her ears.

“I think—” She found it difficult to take oxygen into her
lungs. Her sense of control was slipping slowly away. “I have t-to—”

Her lips and tongue wouldn’t properly form the words. Her
mouth couldn’t possibly keep up with all the messages being fired
lightning-quick by the synapses in her brain.
Fight or flight,
her
adrenaline told her. Tears spilled down her cheeks and she suddenly had the
urge to run—anywhere. She wanted to be anywhere but there.

Deb squeezed her hand.

“Is this what I think it is?”

Charlotte hadn’t had a panic attack in nearly a year. She
nodded. It was all she
could
do.

“Go. Get some air,” Deb urged.

Charlotte turned on her heels and retraced their steps, suppressing
the instinct to bolt. She rushed back through the waiting room and all the way
outside.
In or out
, her fears screamed inside her head. If she kept it
all in, she might die. If she let it out, she might puke. Collapsing on a
nearby bench, she gave herself over to shuddering, wheezy sobs. Despair clawed
at every inch of her and she fought to push it down. Push it down, compress it,
fold it neatly, and tuck it away some place where it couldn’t surface again.
She pressed her fists against her closed eyes and watched as clusters of
shimmering fireworks burst across her eyelids. Anything to get rid of the
images of that day three years ago.

She might have thought it was an accident. He was drunk, not
in complete control of himself. But Charlotte had seen the clear purpose in his
eyes, the deliberate turn of the wheel before the engine revved. She still
couldn’t remember the moment of impact. But she remembered how her mother was
standing near the driveway one minute, and was sprawled on the lawn ten feet
away the next minute.

The car didn’t stop after it hit her mother. It continued
forward, heading straight for the house. Straight for Charlotte inside. With
her eyes glued to her mother’s limp body outside, she didn’t react until it was
almost too late. No sooner had she stepped away from the big picture window in
the living room when the car crashed through it, knocking Charlotte to the
floor in a spray of glass.

She crawled through the shards, past the front of the car,
its engine still running hot, ignoring the continuous blare of the horn. She
crawled through the grass, trailing blood from her cut palms and knees, until
she saw her mother’s pale face and glassy eyes.

“Baby,” her mother whispered, curling her finger toward her.
Other than her slowly blinking eyelids, and her lips that were already turning
white, that finger was the only part of her that moved. “Baby, I love you.”

“Mom? Mom, don’t…” Charlotte knelt and cradled her mother in
her arms. Her mother’s side was warm. Sticky. It soaked into Charlotte’s
clothes and covered her hands.

“I love you, Char. Be a good girl, okay?” Her eyes shifted
in and out of focus.

“Don’t…you can’t die! Mommy, please don’t leave me.”
Charlotte hadn’t called her
Mommy
since she was six. “Mommy please…”

Her mom kept whispering
I love you
until the
paramedics pulled Charlotte away. She tried to push them back, tried to hold
onto her mother, and screamed when she finally felt the pain of her broken
wrist. The medics pried her slippery fingers from her mother’s arms and strapped
her to a backboard, loaded her in the ambulance. She didn’t hear the questions
they asked her. She didn’t hear the sirens or the radio. She kept seeing it
over and over in her head, in silent slow motion.

He was drunk, but it was no accident.

It was murder.