by Amy Hatvany
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For my daughters and my son, who made it essential to consider both sides of this story.
Violators cannot live with the truth: survivors cannot live without it.
—Chrystine Oksana
Tyler
I don’t see the gun until it’s pointed right at me.
“Drive,” she says, shifting her upper body toward me. We are in the cab of my truck, me behind the wheel, Amber in the passenger seat. Her arm trembles, from uncertainty or the weight of the weapon, it’s impossible to tell.
I look at her, blinking fast. “Amber, wait—”
“Shut up.” Her voice is stone. Unyielding. She cocks the hammer with her thumb and I jerk to the left, toward the driver’s side window. My shoulders hunch up around my ears and then—I can’t help it—I say her name again.
“I said, shut up!” Amber repeats, this time with a shrill, unstable edge. She tilts her head toward the parking lot’s exit. “Go.” Her index finger rests against the side of the trigger. One twitch, one small movement, and it could all be over.
I straighten and try to steady my breath. Just do what she says. I put the key in the ignition, turn it, and the engine springs to life. The radio blasts and Amber and I both startle; she hurries to snap it off. A bead of sweat slides down my forehead, despite the bone-chilling bite in the air. It’s early November, and it strikes me that it has been almost a year since she came home for Christmas and found me waiting for her at her parents’ house. So much has happened since then. Everything has changed.
I pull out onto the street, telling myself that one of my coworkers inside the red-brick station house must have noticed the two of us together, that something in Amber’s stance or facial expression hinted at what she was about to do. Someone will follow us or, at the very least, call the police. But even as I think these things, I know they won’t happen. My partner, Mason, had already left for home, for his wife and daughter. The paramedic team who took over for us was behind the closed doors of the garage, double-checking inventory in the rig. The firefighters were upstairs in the bunk room, sleeping if they needed it, or in the gym, shooting the shit and lifting weights to pass the time. As first responders, we are accustomed to crises, our bodies conditioned to react. We race toward disaster instead of from it, but we don’t stand by the window, scanning our surroundings, expecting to see it as it strikes.
When I first stepped outside and saw Amber waiting for me in the dimly lit parking lot, I was foolish enough to feel a spark of hope. “We need to talk,” she said, and I nodded, noting that she was thinner than I’d seen her in years. Her face was gaunt, sharp cheekbones and enormous hazel eyes in darkened sockets. Her thin brown hair fell in messy waves to her jawline, and she wore a puffy black ski jacket that only emphasized her stick-slim legs. She couldn’t have weighed much more than a hundred pounds. Nine years ago, when she was fifteen, in the hospital at her worst, she had weighed eighty-two.
“Get on the freeway,” Amber says now, releasing the hammer and dropping the gun to her lap, where she cradles it, staring straight ahead. Her face is shrouded in shadow, making it impossible for me to guess what she is thinking. “Go south.”
“You don’t need to do this,” I say, hoping I might be able to reason with her. “You said we need to talk, so please . . . let’s talk.”
“Just drive where I tell you to drive.” She lifts the gun and points it at me again, this time holding it with two hands, one cupped under the other, her finger still lying next to the trigger.
“Okay, okay! Sorry.” A familiar, tightly wound panic coils in my chest; I worry what might happen if it springs loose. “You don’t need the gun.”
Her eyes narrow into slits. “Don’t tell me what I need.” She jabs the nose of the weapon into my ribs and cocks the hammer once more.
I gasp, and then pump the brakes, slowing to a stop at a red light. My eyes flit to our surroundings, searching for someone on the street, anyone I can signal for help, but it’s three in the morning in our sleepy college town. There are no other cars around.
The tips of my nerves burn beneath my skin, and then I hear my dad’s deep voice in my head: “Don’t just sit there, Son. Do something.”
The light turns green, and Amber pushes the gun deeper into my side, urging me forward. I ease my foot down on the gas pedal, contemplating the ways my father might take control of a situation like this. I see him shooting out his right arm and grabbing Amber by the back of the neck, slamming her head against the dashboard. I imagine his thick fingers curling into a fist and punching her in the face.
But I don’t want to hurt Amber, not more than I already have. What I want is for everything to go back the way it was when we first met—before my parents’ divorce and her illness, before we grew apart and then came back together, closer than ever, last June, after she came home from school with an engagement ring on her finger. I want to rewind the clock, take back the night when the world shattered. I want to erase everything that went wrong.
“I hate you,” she says. Her voice sounds diseased, infected with disgust. “I hate you so fucking much.”
I wince, suspecting that I deserve every bit of that venom, the pain of the gun jammed against my ribs. I might even deserve the bullets inside it. I turn onto the freeway onramp, accelerate, and then, unsure what Amber’s plan might be, I look at her. “I know,” I say. “I hate me, too.”
Amber
It was just after midnight when I turned the corner onto my parents’ street, three hours later than I’d told them I’d be home for Christmas break. As I coasted down the gravel driveway that ran alongside the house, I switched off my headlights, just as I had in high school when I showed up past curfew, hoping that the cover of darkness would allow me to sneak inside without getting caught. I might be able to get away with this now, having been away at college for almost four years, but back then, there was no doubt my parents would be waiting up for me, sitting at the kitchen table, my mother sipping at a cup of hot peppermint tea and my father nursing a two-finger pour of Scotch, concern etched into deep lines on both of their foreheads.
“Where have you been?” my father would demand when I finally walked through the back door. “Your mother and I have been worried sick!”
“Sorry,” I’d mumble, shoving my fists into the pockets of my coat and dropping my gaze to the floor. I knew it was pointless to make excuses; it was better to appear penitent and promise to never let it happen again. I understood that their concern was simply a side effect of my being an only child—a child who almost didn’t survive. I came into the world nine weeks early via an emergency C-section, and the neonatal team in the delivery room had to whisk me away after I was lifted, unmoving, from my mother’s womb. I hadn’t cried the way a newborn should. I couldn’t, because I wasn’t breathing. As the doctors called out codes and pumped air into my deflated lungs, my mother lay on the operating table and sobbed, terrified of losing me, while my father squeezed her hand, telling her over and over again that everything would be okay.
“You almost died,” my mom said, the first time she told me this story. Her eyes, the same green-gold color as mine, welled with tears as she produced a picture of me inside what she said was an incubator, where I stayed for t
he first two months of my life. I couldn’t believe how small I was—just three and a half pounds—how the map of my veins glowed like tiny blue rivers beneath translucent, epidermal parchment. “They literally had to jump-start your heart,” she said. “It was a miracle that you lived. You’re a miracle, sweetie. Don’t ever forget that.”
I was only seven at the time, and so I nodded, wanting her to think that her words had made me feel treasured and special, but hearing that my mother thought my birth was miraculous sent an uncomfortable shiver up my spine. I imagined that I’d better do something exceptional, be someone exceptional, to live up to that birth story. They chose not to have any more children because of my perilous arrival; instead, they focused their energies, and all their hopes and dreams, on me.
I sighed as I turned off the engine of my car, landing on the only other time I’d been in a hospital, in an uncomfortable bed, hooked up to monitors, wires, and tubes—a time when a choice I’d made put both my parents’ hearts and my life at risk. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, as if that might stop me from seeing the painful reel of memories playing inside my head. I’m better now, I told myself. I’m not that person anymore.
I lifted my backpack and cell phone from the passenger seat, and peered up at the cozy, two-story Victorian-style house where I’d spent the first eighteen years of my life. Black December clouds obscured the moon, but the glow from the streetlamp was enough to illuminate the hundred-year-old structure that my parents had painstakingly updated as time and money allowed. They replaced the plumbing, the knob-and-tube wiring, and finally, after all the rooms had been fully remodeled and everything brought up to code, they sanded and lacquered the original blond maple floors. The outside was painted robin egg blue, and the wraparound porch and steep eaves were edged in white gingerbread trim, both of which were currently covered in hundreds of festive, twinkling lights. Even if the last few years I lived there hadn’t exactly been a fairy tale, it still looked like a storybook house, and it would always be a place I could call home.
Hiking my bag over my left shoulder, I opened the trunk of my car and hefted my black suitcase up and out, setting it on the ground. I was anxious to get inside, climb the stairs, and slip into my childhood bed. The entire time I’d been living in Pullman for school, my mom left the room I grew up in untouched—hopeful, I was sure, that I might return to Bellingham and move back in with them once I graduated, in six months. But the truth was, if I had had a choice in the matter, I wouldn’t even have come home for Christmas. After suffering through a brutal finals week, all I wanted was to snuggle up with Daniel and talk about our plans for moving to Seattle together next fall, where he’d be attending the University of Washington medical school and I would start studying for my official certification by the American College of Sports Medicine. Just sitting for the test required a four-year degree in nutrition and physiological science, and afterward I’d be able to start working toward my ultimate goal of working as a trainer for professional athletes, specifically for the Seahawks, the team I’d grown up rooting for with my dad. But instead of Daniel and me spending the holidays with each other, he flew home to Denver to see his family and I packed my bags to drive home and see mine. He and I had only been dating since July, when we met at the gym, but things were already feeling serious between us. Serious enough that when my parents had driven over the pass to spend Thanksgiving break with me, I introduced them to him, something I’d never done with someone I was dating before. All of my other relationships had been short-lived—lasting a few weeks, a month at the most. But Daniel and I had slept together practically every night for the last four months, either at his place or at mine, and the idea of being away from him for winter break felt like torture.
I snuck through the side door, locked it behind me, and then sent Daniel a text. “Made it,” I said. “Missing you like crazy.” I set my backpack on a kitchen chair, glancing around the dark space, listening for the telltale footsteps from the creaky floor upstairs that would mean one or both of my parents were still awake. My phone dinged, but before I could unlock the screen, a deep voice sounded from the couch in the family room, a space adjacent to the kitchen.
“Hey, Amber,” it said, and I dropped my phone. It clattered on the hardwood floor as I splayed a flat hand over my chest, feeling like my heart might pound right through it.
“Jesus!” I said. My gaze flew to the couch, where I saw the shadow of a familiar blond head. I reached over to the wall near the door and flipped on the overhead light so I could see his face. “Tyler!” I exclaimed. “You scared the shit out of me!”
“Sorry,” he said. He stood up and walked around the couch, and I was struck, as I always was since I’d moved away, by how much he had changed since the day we met eleven years ago, when his family moved into our neighborhood. Back then, he was gangly-limbed, all knobby joints and too-big feet and hands. Now twenty-five, he was six-foot-two and had filled out substantially, with broad shoulders and well-muscled arms and legs, a younger, better-looking version of his father. He had full lips, a strong jaw, and pronounced cheekbones that drew direct attention to his eyes. I had a hard time reconciling these two versions of Tyler; whenever I thought of him, my mind flashed to an image of the shy, awkward boy I’d grown up with, not the strong, attractive man he had become.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. It wasn’t unusual for Tyler to treat our house like his own—he was an only child, too, and after his parents divorced, and his mom, Liz, had to start working full-time, Tyler spent many of the evenings she had to stay late at the hospital pharmacy with us. He and I would do our homework together, and then he’d join us for dinner, sometimes even spending the night on our couch if Liz was stuck with the swing shift. During football season, he would spend every Sunday afternoon watching a game with me and my dad, yelling at the TV and high-fiving when our team scored a touchdown or sacked the opposing team’s quarterback. Tyler was here so often, in fact, that my mother began referring to him as her surrogate son. But the last time I’d been home, we hadn’t parted on the best of terms, so I couldn’t help but feel a little uncomfortable having him here now.
“Your parents had Mom and me over for dinner,” he said. “I told them I’d stay up and make sure you got in okay so they could go to bed.” He pulled me into a hug. “It’s good to see you.”
“You, too.” I turned my head so my cheek pressed into his chest. His body was hard and warm; his shirt held a whisper of a sweet, but earthy-scented cologne. I didn’t remember him wearing it before, which immediately made me wonder if he had a girlfriend who might have bought it for him. Or perhaps he bought it because of her. It would make everything so much easier if he was dating someone, too.
I stepped back and picked up my phone from the floor, checking to see if the notification chime I’d heard moments before had been a return text from Daniel. “Miss you, too, babe,” he said. “Can’t sleep without you next to me. Love you.”
My cheeks flushed as I read his words, and I felt Tyler’s eyes on me, intent. Back in September, when at my parents’ insistence I came home for Labor Day weekend, Tyler and I had hit Cafe Akroteri for dinner on Saturday night, and then hung out at his apartment, half-watching a preseason NFL game he’d recorded while we talked. At some point, I’d told him about Daniel, and his reaction had been less than enthusiastic.
“Is it serious?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s getting there, I guess. I like him.”
“But who is the guy?” he demanded. “How long have you known him? Have you talked to any of the other girls he’s dated, or his friends? Did you Google him, at least?” He peppered me with questions like these until I finally snapped.
“You know what, Ty? It’s none of your business,” I said. “I get enough of this kind of shit from my parents.”
He scowled. “I’m just worried about you.”
“No. You’re just jealous,” I shot back, and then, seeing how his shoulders curled fo
rward and his face crumpled, I knew that my words had poked at a wound in his heart that had yet to fully heal.
He dropped his gaze to the floor and sat back hard in his seat.
“Ty, wait. I didn’t mean—”
“I think you should go,” he said, cutting me off. He looked at me, his eyes the same light, clear color as sea glass. Without another word, he stood up, went into his bedroom, and closed the door. A second later, there was a loud thump, followed by another, and then one more. I wasn’t sure what he was doing—hitting the wall?—but it seemed clear that going after him would only make things worse.
I returned to my parents’ house that night, then drove the six hours back to school the next day. Since then, I’d basically avoided any complicated interaction with Tyler, wanting to keep things light between us, knowing all too well how sensitive he was, and certainly not wanting to hurt him again.
Standing in the kitchen with him now, I hoped that his offer to wait for my arrival was his way of saying that all was well. “So,” I said. “How are you?”
“You’d know if you ever answered my texts with more than emojis,” he said, playfully, but I still heard a tinge of reproach.
“I know, I know,” I said, holding my hands up in surrender. “I’m a sucky friend. My schedule has been brutal. Emojis are pretty much all I can manage.” This was mostly true. On top of the fifteen- to seventeen-credit class load I took each semester, I worked as a personal trainer at a gym near my tiny apartment. Most of my clients were mothers trying to get their prepregnancy bodies back, or older women attempting to halt the inevitable ravages of time, neither of which fit in with my long-term career goals. But I tried to look at the job as a stepping-stone, and it paid fairly well. For the most part, I could set my own hours, and to tell the truth, I enjoyed seeing the progress these women made—a pound lost here, a heavier weight added to the leg press there. It reminded me that even the smallest of changes can reap meaningful rewards.
