Ever After Drake (20 page)

“
Don’t,” he says around
the stick of death between his lips, his voice hard but not angry.
“Don’t. You don’t have to say it. This…this was all me.”

And his face crumples. Tears start
running down his face. He collapses forward into me and I wrap my
arms around him.

He just cries. Then he sobs. Then he
howls.

And after what feels like an eternity,
he’s quiet.

His unlit cigarette lies on the floor
by his feet.

Knowing I’ve only got a few minutes
before he’s a dead asleep log, I pull him to his feet and help him
over to the bed. The second his head hits the pillow, he’s
out.

My eyes are tired and my brain feels
slow and dull. I check the clock and find it’s twelve
fifty-eight.

Sure that Drake is well asleep, I open
the door and step out into the hall.

The entire McCain family is lined up
on the floor in the hall. Kale’s head is in Sage’s lap and he’s
fast sleep. Sage’s head rests on Lake’s shoulder and I’m not
positive if she’s asleep or not, her eyes are closed.

But Robin, Robert, and Lake’s eyes
jump to me the second I walk out. I put a finger to my lips for
them to be quiet as to not wake Kale and Sage and sink to the floor
across the hall from them.

“
Drake’s sleeping,” I
say.

“
Thank you so much, again,
for coming,” Robin says. She gives me a tired, appreciative smile.
“We weren’t sure what else to do.”

I give a nod, chewing on my lower lip.
“Thanks for calling me.”

And as horrible as it is to be here,
as hard as this is, I’m glad I’m here.

“
Did…” Robin struggles for
words. “Did he say anything? I know my son and I know his
reactions. I’ve never seen anything close to that man in
there.”

I hesitate in telling her. What Drake
told me is personal. It’s deep. It’s rough and heavy. “I think you
should wait to hear it from him. If he wants to tell you. It isn’t
my information to give.”

Robin nods and two tears slip down her
face. “Of course.”

I notice Sage’s eyes have opened. Her
head still rests on Lake’s shoulder, but she’s listening. Kale
snores softly. He looks so peaceful there, sleeping in his sister’s
lap. He’s lucky to have the youth and naivety to be blissfully
unaware of the gravity of this situation.

“
Any updates on Diana?” I
ask.

Robin doesn’t seem to be able to
speak. She takes two sobbing breaths before burying her face in her
husband’s shoulder.

“
We spoke to her parents
about an hour ago,” Robert says as he wraps an arm around Robin’s
shoulders. “The doctors confirmed there’s no chance of her pulling
out of this. They’re going to gather the rest of the family in the
morning to say goodbye before they shut the machines
down.”

I squeeze my eyes closed and shake my
head.

I always resented the idea of Diana.
The thought of this other woman that was a part of Drake’s life
when I no longer could be. It’s easy to hate an idea.

But Diana is a person. Someone with
family and friends. She’s someone who had plans.

Not much in life is fair.

“
So, what happened,
exactly?” I ask, opening my eyes again. “The roads were slick.
Diana was leaving Drake’s apartment.”

Robert nods. “She was only about a
block from his apartment. Headed in the direction of yours, on her
way home. The police said it looked like both cars tried to break,
but there was some serious black ice since the trucks hadn’t been
out yet. They both slid right into the intersection.” His voice
falters and he clears his throat to dislodge the emotion. “There
was a semi-truck behind the other driver. He couldn’t stop either.
There wasn’t much left of the other driver’s car.”

“
Lake said they couldn’t
even identify them,” I say, shaking my head.

Robert nods. “Cops said it was one of
the worst accidents they’ve ever seen.”

“
Drake heard the
accident,” Sage says. My eyes slide over to her. “He saw all of the
aftermath. Watched them pull Diana from her car.”

My stomach feels sick. “No wonder he
reacted the way he did. Anyone in that situation would have. And
then to learn the baby…”

Robin’s lower lip quivers and she
threads her fingers through her husbands. “Someone should be with
him. Will you stay with him tonight?”

“
Of course,” I say with a
nod. My body feels stiff and heavy as I climb to my feet. “I’ll
stay with him. You all should get some sleep.”

Robert climbs to his feet, pulling
Robin up with him. “We’ll crash in the waiting room. Come get us if
you or Drake needs anything.”

“
Okay,” I say. I place my
hand on the doorknob and give it a turn. I glance once more over my
shoulder before I go in.

The McCain family really is a
beautiful family. They’re supportive, and loving. Everything I ever
wanted.

I step inside Drake’s room and close
the door behind me.

CHAPTER
TWENTY

What do I do?

I stand at the door for a long time.
Every cell in my body tells me to climb into that little hospital
bed with Drake, wrap my arms around him, and hold him tight until
the sun comes up and the sedation wears off. But every emotion in
my heart says to protect itself. Every second of physical contact
with Drake is another needle in my core.

Eventually, what I settle for is
dragging one of the chairs right next to the bed. I sit, fold my
arms on the edge of the bed, and rest my head in my
arms.

And finally, somewhere around
two-fifteen, I fall asleep.

When I wake, I’m lying in the hospital
bed. I have no idea how I got here. But Drake is nowhere to be
seen.

I scramble out of the bed, check the
bathroom to find it empty. I dart out into the hall, which is
empty. I jog down toward the waiting room, and there, I find the
McCain’s.

“
Where is he?” I say. I
feel panicked and ashamed for a while. I was supposed to be
watching him and I just lost him.

I catch sight of the clock on the
wall. It reads eight-fifteen.

Lake is stretched across a few chairs
asleep. Robin is in a chair, propped up against a wall, asleep as
well. Robert sits with his fingers clamped together, bouncing one
knee. Kale eats from a bag of chips. Sage is the one who stands and
walks over to me.

“
He’s saying his goodbye’s
to Diana,” she says. She looks exhausted, but somehow still put
together and ready to walk into a boardroom. It boggles my mind
she’s only twenty-one. And only two years younger than
me.

“
Did he seem okay?” I
ask.

Sage shrugs her shoulders and gives a
little shake of her head. “As good as he could seem, given the
circumstances.”

I nod. I rub at my eyes, not worrying
about ruining my mascara since I cried it away hours ago last
night. There’s a tight knot in my chest that hasn’t left in what
feels like so long.

I pull my phone out of my pocket as
Sage walks back to her family. I didn’t have a charger so the
battery is at only fifteen percent.

By now I would have expected Mom to
call and explain where she was last night. In all likelihood her
flight was probably delayed or bumped back a day because the runway
was sure to be as icy as the roads. But she should have given me an
update at some point.

I nearly drop my phone to the tile
floor, I jump so hard, when it rings. Dick’s name appears on the
caller ID.

“
Hi,” I answer.

“
Hey,” he replies. His
voice already sounds concerned. “Have you heard from your
mom?”

“
I haven’t. I was just
thinking about that, actually. It’s weird she hasn’t
called.”

“
Yeah,” he says. “She
promised to spend the entire day with Skyler but she never showed
last night and I haven’t heard a peep from her all day.”

“
Maybe her flight got
cancelled or delayed last night,” I suggest, hoping it’s
true.

“
I checked with the
airline,” he says. “They said it landed on time last night. She was
on the plane.”

My fingers go chill and my lips must
be blue. My blood has run cold.

“
Where is she then?” I ask
myself out loud. “She’s not always great at keeping her time
commitments, but she wouldn’t just space
everything
like this.”

“
You know how your mother
is,” Dick says, weight in his voice. “But I’m worried about her.
The roads were really bad last night and she doesn’t like driving
in weather.”

My stomach turns and the world tilts a
little sideways.

“
I need to check on
something,” I say. “I’ll call you back in a bit, okay?”

“
Alright.”

I hang the phone up. My vision has
gone blurry and my legs feel like numb led. The world threatens to
tip.

“
Kaylee?”

I turn to meet Drake’s eyes. He’s got
the Drake look on.

“
What color was the other
car?” I ask, my voice out of breath.

“
Other car?”

Tears bite at the back of my eyes and
my throat feels tight. “The accident last night. A block from your
apartment, three blocks from mine. What color was the other
car?”

Drake presses his lips tight together
and his eyes drop for a moment as he tries to recall. “It was a
lime green Beetle.”

My expression collapses and tears
start rolling down my face.

“
Kaylee,” Drake says,
rushing forward and grabbing me by the shoulders. “What’s
wrong?”

“
Where would they have
taken the body of that driver?” I ask, taking two steps away from
him, wrapping my arms around my shoulders.

“
I…I don’t know. I assume
somewhere here at the hospital,” he says. He sounds totally
confused. I turn away from him, my eyes wildly searching for I
don’t know what. Robert has stood and is just a few paces away,
concern on his face. Sage gives me a questioning look. But my head
is spinning and the floor is rocking.

“
Kaylee, what’s going on?”
I hear Drake’s voice ask somewhere through the haze.

“
I need to speak to the
police who went to the accident last night,” I breathe.

“
Why?”

“
Because my mom was the
other driver.”

Someone called the police for me. They
talked to me, confirming the other car in the accident was a lime
green VW Beetle. One of the officers gave me a ride to the
coroner’s office. I talked with someone there, and what little they
had to go by with what was left from the accident, we confirmed it
was my mother.

I called Dick. He came down. They
recommended we cremate my mother, given what the accident did to
her. I was cationic. Dick gave them the okay. Condolences were
given.

It’s amazing how you can go through an
entire day, do things, talk to people, and not even remember it by
the time night falls.

Dick takes me home with him. He breaks
the news to Skyler. I try to get it together enough to provide him
some small level of comfort. But I don’t think I do a very good
job. He doesn’t quite get it at first. And then he
cries.

I crawl into his bed with him that
night and hold him. I don’t have any words of comfort. I don’t know
how to tell him it will be okay. But I can be there. Physically, if
not emotionally.

The night rolls by in a blurry, dull
roll of sleep and numbness. I’m awake, I’m asleep. I simply
exist.

Learning the father I never met was
dead is one thing. Learning the woman who kept me, even though she
was too young, was another.

She wasn’t perfect. She had so many
faults. She couldn’t ever quite figure things out.

But she was trying. She was going to
get it together.

And then it was all ripped
away.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE

When faced with death, everything in
your life suddenly seems so trivial.

You take stock of the things in your
life that actually matter. You pull on your big girl panties and
realize that life is short and that if you want something you’ve
got to take it.

But first you have to start living
again.

How much loss can you handle before
you completely fall apart?

Life grinds to a halt. My apartment is
the only space I occupy. Work? That doesn’t seem to matter. The
school calls quite a few times. They leave messages. I don’t pick
up. They can fire me. It doesn’t much feel like it
matters.

People come and knock at my door. But
I don’t answer. After a while someone says they’re the police and
need to know I’m okay. I open the door, let them walk around for a
minute or two, and when they see I haven’t harmed myself, they
leave.