The Wreck (6 page)

By one o’clock, the preparations were
done, so Carly wandered onto the front porch. The day was thick with humidity,
and the electric wires that lined South Road buzzed in the heat. Across the
street, the Durhams arrived home from the parade downtown and unloaded chairs
and a cooler from the back of their van. Little David Durham, who Carly had
babysat for years, waved to her. She waved back, wishing he’d wander over to
see her the way he used to. But he turned away and followed his parents inside.
Overwhelmed with sadness, Carly suspected he was afraid of her because she
didn’t talk anymore.

Her mother had invited Brian for one
thirty, but he’d been noncommittal. By the time one forty-five rolled around,
Carly was convinced he wasn’t coming. The smoke from the barbeque wafted over
the house, bringing with it the sounds of laughter and chatter from the
backyard. As she got up to go inside, he appeared at the gate, looking hesitant
and adorable. Her heart beating fast with excitement, Carly went down the
stairs to open the gate for him.

With relief and maybe even joy in his
eyes, he cradled her face in his hands and kissed her.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and
fell into the kiss with the first bit of exuberance she’d felt since the
accident.

Apparently, he felt it, too. “Carly,” he
whispered. “I’ve missed you so much.” He kissed her more greedily the second
time, as if he was afraid he wouldn’t get another chance. “I’m sorry about what
I said the last time I was here. I was frustrated.”

She let him know she understood the only
way she could, by reaching up to kiss him again.

“I can still see everything you feel in
your eyes,” he whispered against her lips. “That hasn’t changed.” They held
each other for a long time, until Carly’s mother came to the door.

“Oh, hi, Brian,” Carol said with a smile.
“I’m sorry, don’t let me interrupt. You two take your time, and come on back
when you’re ready for something to eat.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Holbrook.” After her mother
had left them alone, he smiled down at Carly. “Other things sure have changed,
though, huh?”

She rewarded him with the first genuine
smile she had given anyone since they left the willow tree and their innocence
behind.

In
the backyard, picnic tables were covered with festive red-and-white-checkered
tablecloths. Caren and Cate played croquet while Craig helped their father at
the grill. Carly’s sister-in-law Allison reclined on a lounge chair with a hand
resting on her pregnant belly. Her first child was due in October.

“Craig, get Brian a drink, will you
please?” Carol called to her son.

“Thanks,” Brian said.

Craig pulled an icy can from the cooler.
“Nice to see you, Brian.” They shook hands. “I’ve been thinking about you.
How’re you doing?”

“Hanging in. How about you?”

“Can’t complain.” Craig glanced over at
his wife and smiled. “I’m enjoying my last few months of relative freedom.”

“How’s the job at the law firm, Brian?”
Steve Holbrook asked as he tended to the grill.

“Not bad. It’s boring sometimes, but it’s
nice to have the chance to be in that environment and to see what goes on.”

Carly hung on his every word, wanting to
know everything he’d been up to since she last saw him.

“After a few months of delivering mail
and fetching coffee for the partners, you’ll be wondering why you ever wanted
to be an ambulance chaser,” Steve joked.

Brian smiled. “They haven’t ruined it for
me quite yet.”

Carol chuckled and asked Carly to help
her bring out the rest of the food.

She followed her mother inside and began
taking covered bowls out of the refrigerator. Carly had made multiple trips to
the picnic table by the time her father announced that the food on the grill
was ready.

“Someone bring me a plate!” Steve called.
“Hurry!”

Carol handed the platter to Carly, and
she rushed outside with it. As she approached the stone patio, her father
flipped a rack of ribs. The grease falling into the fire below caused the
flames to flare up with a great roar.

Carly dropped the platter, and it
shattered on the patio. Unable to tear her eyes off the licking flames, she
began to tremble.

Brian rushed over to lead her away from
the fire. “It’s okay, baby.” He sat with her in the shade and held her tight
against him. “I’ve got you.”

T
he rest of the family hovered around
Brian and Carly until Carol shooed them away. “Craig and Caren, please clean up
the patio.” After the others had stepped back, Carol squatted next to Carly.
“Everything’s all right, honey,” she said in a soothing voice. “Everyone’s
safe.”

Brian brushed his hand over Carly’s curls
and held her until the trembling subsided.

Carly was mortified that she had upset
everyone and furious with herself for allowing a grill to resurrect memories
she had worked so hard to push to the back of her mind. She’d been having the
fire dream less and less often and had begun to think she might be getting past
her fear. Now she knew that wasn’t the case.

“Are you okay?” Brian asked, his face
soft with concern and love.

With a small nod and a forced smile, she
let him help her up. She hated that he was so worried about her. He’d lost his
brother. She should be helping him through that, not giving him more cause for
concern. Getting up, she brushed the grass off her shorts and took a seat at
the picnic table.

Everyone else sat down and dug in.

Still feeling shaky, Carly pushed the
food around on her plate while the others ate in subdued silence. She looked up
to find her parents watching her with concern written all over faces that she
could now see had aged since she had last looked closely. That, too, was her
fault.

Brian reached for her hand under the
table and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

Carly noticed Caren glaring at her from
across the table.

“What’s wrong, Caren?” their mother
asked.

“Nothing.”

“Clearly, something’s on your mind,”
Carol said. “Why don’t you spit it out so we can get back to enjoying our day?”

“Is that what we’re doing? Enjoying our
day?”

“Caren,” Steve warned.

“It’s okay for you to go on and on every
day about what she’s doing to our family?” Caren shot back at her father. “I thought
maybe we’d get one day off from Carly and her
problems
, but I guess
that’s not going to happen.”

“The fire scared her,” Brian said in
Carly’s defense.

“
Everything
scares her!” Caren
pushed her plate aside and stood. “I’m so sick and tired of having to tiptoe
around her like she’s made of glass and might break. No one in
our
family died! Why are we acting like someone did?” To Carly, she added, “Brian
lost his
brother
, but you don’t see him going around like the walking
dead, wanting everyone to fall all over him.”

“That’s
enough
, Caren,” Carol said
in a tone that left no room for argument.

Carly got up and went inside. Before the
screen door slammed closed behind her, she heard Craig say, “Way to go, Caren.”

“Shut up, Craig! You don’t live here. You
don’t know what it’s been like.”

Carly heard Brian following her as she
went up to her room.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he
reached for her hand.

She propped her chin on her knees.

“Don’t worry about Caren. She was blowing
off steam.”

From out in the street, the whir of
bottle rockets filled the air, reminding Carly of another Fourth of July years
earlier when Pete had shot off rockets at the lake.

“Remember Pete and the firecrackers?”

Carly’s eyes widened with surprise as she
nodded. She had forgotten how often they’d had the same thoughts.

Brian got up, went over to her desk, and
picked up a pad. He grabbed a pen and returned to the bed. He plopped the pad
down in front of her and held out the pen. “Talk to me.”

She took the pen. Nibbling on the cap, she
studied his handsome face. Usually by the beginning of July his skin was tanned
to golden brown, but not this year. Leaning over the pad, she wrote the one
thing she had missed saying to him the most: “Carly Holbrook loves Brian
Westbury.” She drew a heart around the words like she had for years on every
notebook she owned.

He smiled. “Now tell me something I don’t
know.”

She wrote, “I’m not doing this on
purpose. I want to talk, but I can’t.”

“I know that, too, honey. I never thought
for a minute that you were doing it on purpose.”

“But you’ve been mad at me.”

He shook his head. “I’m mad at life
lately.”

“Me, too.”

He held her gaze for a long moment.
“There’s a new lead in the accident investigation.”

Carly raised her eyebrows.

He told her about the man he had seen in
the road a couple of months before the accident and how he had forgotten about
it. “My dad started looking into it and found that two other drivers reported
seeing someone lurking on the side of Tucker Road. He hasn’t found anyone who
saw him the night of the accident, but he’s still digging around. I told my dad
Sam never drove the way they said he must’ve been driving before the wreck.”

“That’s bothered me, too,” Carly wrote.
“I hope your dad can find a way to clear Sam’s name.”

“People in town are talking about us
grasping at straws to clear Sam. They’re saying my dad is abusing his
position.”

Carly shook her head.

“If there’s a chance, even the
slightest
chance, it wasn’t Sam’s fault, don’t we have to do all we can to get to the
truth?”

“Of course you do,” she wrote. “Don’t
worry about what anyone says.”

Brian held out his arms to her.

She put down the pen and reached for him.

“Before everything happened, if you’d
asked me when I was happiest with you, I would’ve said it was when we were
doing this.” He pulled back to kiss her and smiled when he added, “I would’ve
said we were at our
very
best under the willow tree.” He ran his lips
over the pink blush on her cheeks, his voice going soft and thick with emotion.
“But after not being able to talk to you during the worst two months of my
life, I have a whole new perspective on what I love best about you. I can talk
to you about anything and everything. I never realized how important that was
to me until I didn’t have it anymore.”

Her eyes shimmered with tears as she
caressed his face.

He held her close to him for a long time.
“Do you feel like taking a walk?”

She shook her head.

“We won’t go anywhere near Tucker Road.”

Ashamed to admit that the only place she
felt safe anymore was at home, the idea of leaving the house made her feel sick
and panicky. Once she had made it as far as the gate, fully intending to walk
around the block, but her heart had pounded so hard she’d thought she was
having a heart attack. She’d had trouble breathing and had vomited right there
in the front yard.

She’d felt like she was losing her mind,
and it had scared her so badly she hadn’t tried it again. Brian and her family
had been so focused on her not talking, they hadn’t figured out yet that she
couldn’t bring herself to leave the house. And after what had happened earlier,
she wasn’t prepared to add to the pile of “problems” her sister had referred
to.

Brian sensed her hesitation. “Never mind.
We’ll do it another time.”

After her sisters took off to meet their
friends, Brian coaxed Carly out of her room. They spent the rest of the day
with her parents, Craig, and Allison. Brian’s parents stopped by to have a
drink, and after sunset they left with the Holbrooks to watch the fireworks at
the town common.

“You’re
sure
you don’t want to go
see the fireworks?” Brian asked for the tenth time.

With a smile and the wave of her hand,
she told him to go on ahead if he wanted to.

He pushed off the floor to get the porch
swing moving again. “Not without you.”

Carly could tell she surprised him when
she turned and pressed her lips to his.

He wrapped his arms around her and kissed
her with two months’ worth of pent up desire and frustration. His tongue
tangled with hers, reminding her of the passion they had shared from the first
time his lips had tentatively touched hers at an eighth grade dance. Nothing,
not time nor maturity nor even tragedy, could dampen it.

She drew back from him and wondered if
she looked as dazed as she felt.

“I’m sorry, honey. I don’t mean to push
you.”

Carly stood and held out a hand to him.

Startled, Brian laced his fingers through
hers.