by Debra Doxer
He was lying across the center console, his blue shirt drenched in blood. My gaze traveled up to the back of his head and my stomach twisted. The side of Dad’s face was supposed to be there, but it wasn’t.
Darkness blurred the edges of my vision. A low keening sound came from my throat. I reached a trembling hand down toward him, but then I stopped, hardly knowing where to touch, not wanting to hurt him. Frantically, I pushed back and grabbed for the door handle. My hand slid off it the first time, and I had to try again. The door finally swung open, dumping me out of the car and onto the warm pavement. Trying to get my legs under me, I looked around. There was no one here to help us. We were completely alone.
The scream started low in my belly, then drilled its way up through my chest before it finally tore from my throat, filling my ears, echoing into the night.
It wasn’t long after it happened that some people drove by, a few minutes, maybe less. I wasn’t sure; I wasn’t thinking clearly. But they were on me before I could get back in the cruiser and try to find my dad’s phone or radio for help. Soon after that, the ambulances arrived along with the police, my dad’s colleagues and friends. As I was being looked at by the paramedics, I could already hear some of the officers choking back their emotions. I was in shock and denial, asking to see my father, not admitting what it meant when they wouldn’t let me.
When they tried to load me onto the ambulance and close the doors¸ I fought them. I couldn’t leave my father. And I hadn’t told anyone about the red truck with the silver stripe. I had to tell them who did this. It was Uncle Russ who talked me down and convinced me that my going would allow them to give my dad their full attention. He promised that Dad would be following in another ambulance, and that I’d have a chance to say everything I needed to later.
Later could have been an hour or a day for all I knew. I wasn’t really there during the ambulance ride, and I barely noticed when we arrived at the hospital. My face burned and stung as it was cleaned and bandaged, but I wasn’t in the room. I was back in the cruiser, hearing the glass shatter, seeing my father fall out of sight.
I was sitting on a bed in the emergency room in my own curtained-off area, absently watching doctors and nurses pass by, when Uncle Russ arrived to say that Mom and Emma were outside.
“Is Dad here yet?” I asked.
His frown deepened as he moved closer to the bed. “Do you remember what happened, Sarah?”
I nodded.
He bit his lip and closed his eyes for a moment. “Your father’s gone, honey. I’m so sorry.” But his words floated past me.
“Did they bring him here? You said they’d bring him here.”
Uncle Russ’s eyes widened at my calm question. Then he told me that my father was indeed brought here.
My head fell back onto the pillow. He was in this building and not out on that dark road anymore. Whatever had sustained me up to that point disappeared. I turned onto my side and pulled my legs up, making myself as small as I could while everything I hadn’t wanted to face burst from inside me.
My father was gone.
He wouldn’t be there when I got home.
He wouldn’t wake me up tomorrow morning with “Sara Smile.”
I would never hear the sound of his voice again. Sobbing, I turned my face into the pillow, my body shaking against the mattress.
Uncle Russ lifted my hair off my face as he tried to soothe me. But I didn’t want soothing, I wanted my father. And every time I closed my eyes, I saw the face of the man who took him from me.
Turning my head, I said, “It was Jackson Pierce’s truck that stopped beside us. I saw it.” My voice was a broken whisper. When I got no reaction, I thought he hadn’t heard me. Pushing myself up, I said it again. “It was Jackson. He killed my father. It was him.”
Uncle Russ blinked at me once, twice, and then again.
At that moment, a nurse came in and pulled back the curtain. “Since the deepest cut is on your face, Sarah,” she said, “we’re going to have the plastic surgeon see you. Someone will be here to take you upstairs in a bit.” Her bright smile faltered when she noticed my tears, but she only turned away and pulled the curtain closed again as she left.
She was wrong. The deepest cut wasn’t on my face. It wasn’t anywhere that could be seen.
When I looked at Uncle Russ again, he was rigid, his face an impassive mask. “I’ll go tell your mother that they’re taking you upstairs soon,” he said. Then he walked out of the room without ever acknowledging what I’d told him.
“It doesn’t make sense. He wouldn’t have left a witness.”
Uncle Russ and Chief Reardon were talking somewhere nearby, keeping their voices low. “And for a fucking traffic ticket? He did this over a moving violation? That’s insane,” Russ said.
I’d woken up awhile ago, but I pretended to be asleep. At first I thought I was home in my room, but then I heard a beeping sound and felt a pulling sensation along my cheek, and it all came barreling back at me like a freight train. So I kept my eyes closed, trying to postpone waking up to a day that wouldn’t have my father in it.
Nurses passed through my room. Uncle Russ came and went. I recognized his cologne and the heavy sound of his boots on the tile floor. Now the chief was here too.
“It’s been building,” the chief said. “Sam’s been goading him. At least his little girl is okay. By some miracle, he missed her.”
My throat was dry. I tried to fill it with saliva and swallow. “I was hiding in the backseat.” I croaked it out, wincing at the sharp pain on the right side of my face.
There was light pressure on my arm as I blinked against the light, trying to open my eyes.
“You’re awake, Sarah. Let me get the doctor.” It was Uncle Russ who spoke.
My eyes were scratchy, but I pried them open and turned toward his voice. “I was hiding in the backseat. Dad didn’t know I was there. No one saw me in the car.” My voice broke.
“Shh, it’s okay,” Uncle Russ said.
I could see him clearly now, looking down at me with dark circles beneath his eyes. My focus shifted to the chief beside him. His wispy gray hair stuck up in all directions, and his face was rough with stubble. I wondered how long we’d all been here in the hospital, and where my mother was.
“Why were you hiding in the car?” the chief asked in a gentle voice.
Swallowing, I pictured Spencer’s ravaged face. “I wanted to help Spencer, but she wouldn’t let me go with him.”
Uncle Russ and the chief exchanged a look. “You’re not making sense,” the chief said.
“Spencer is Pierce’s nephew,” Russ explained. “Is that who you mean?”
I nodded. “His uncle hurts him. Dad and I were going to see a social worker to get him help.”
Then Uncle Russ’s hand touched my shoulder. “Do you know if your dad talked to Jackson about Spencer?”
“No. He never got the chance.” My lips trembled as the chief and Russ blurred behind my tears.
“Sarah,” the chief said. “What do you remember?”
My gaze darted to Russ. Hadn’t he told him? “The red truck with the silver stripe,” I said, my voice stronger now. “The shot came from Jackson’s truck. Everyone knows that truck.”
My heart beat wildly as I closed my eyes and replayed the scene. The way they kept looking at me and speaking so calmly, as if they already didn’t believe me, made me want to say it again and again. Because I knew it was Jackson. Something in their expression told me that they knew it too.
The chief leaned down toward me. “Did you see Jackson or just his truck?”
My lips pressed together as my gaze shifted between them. I didn’t like the chief’s question or what I thought it implied. For a moment, I considered lying, but I couldn’t. It was too big a lie.
“Only the truck,” I admitted softly, and Uncle Russ and Chief Reardon exchanged a look. Both their expressions were tight and uneasy.
“Where’s my mother?” I asked,
thinking she should be here with me.
“She’s just outside. She came by earlier while you were asleep.”
They left soon after that without saying anything more, only offering me encouraging looks and clichés about feeling better. Then Mom and Emma came in. We all burst into tears when we saw each other. I pushed myself up to hug them both.
“Thank God, you’re okay. Thank God.” Mom repeated this over and over again. I wondered if she’d be angry with me for sneaking out, but she never mentioned it, not once. While Mom was hugging me, Emma backed away, scrubbing her face with her hands, not meeting my eyes as she sat down in the corner.
The fallout had already begun. I saw it coming in the way Uncle Russ and the chief looked at each other before they left, and now in the way Emma was avoiding eye contact with me.
They released me from the hospital that night. I had bandages over the stitches on my face and two more covering gashes on my upper chest. The scars would heal, except for the one on my cheek. It would be visible but small, the doctor told me, as if I actually cared about a scar. I cared more that Emma wouldn’t talk to me. I cared that the police never asked me any more questions. I cared that my mother kept us all in the house like prisoners while she planned the funeral entirely by phone. The only times I left the house were to go to my doctors’ appointments, and then Uncle Russ took me.
None of us slept. We wandered around like zombies, crying on and off, picking at the casseroles people brought over for us. It was too quiet. My father’s presence had always been so large; the house felt cavernous without him in it. It felt wrong, and I kept glancing at the door, praying he’d walk through it and that all this had been a nightmare.
I hadn’t seen or heard from Spencer since he disappeared from the dunes. But at night, I watched the Pierce house from my window. Spencer had gone back there. I knew it from the light that came on in his bedroom each night. His uncle was there too; I was sure of it. By the looks of their house, their lives hadn’t changed at all. I wanted to throw open the window and yell at them. I wanted to scream my head off. How dare they get on with their lives like nothing happened? How dare everyone?
Over the next few days, the chief and Uncle Russ came and went, usually taking my mom into the den and speaking to her in hushed voices. She spent a lot of time on the phone, turning away from the hallway and covering the mouthpiece. She wasn’t telling Emma and me anything, and when Emma asked, Mom snapped at her to leave her alone.
The day of the funeral was the worst. I hadn’t slept at all since I’d come home from the hospital. But the night before, I’d finally fallen asleep for a few hours. When I woke up screaming and shaking so violently, the whole bed vibrated beneath me, Mom called Uncle Russ. He brought a doctor over who gave me some pills that stopped the shakes and the panic. Then Mom helped me pick out a dress and brushed my hair in a dramatic style that didn’t look at all like me. “To hide the bandages,” she’d said, pulling a lock over my cheek. I didn’t question her, but I didn’t understand her desire to hide them either. Showing them to everyone was what I wanted. See what that monster did to me?
The day we buried my father was a blur instead of the sharp pain it could have been. The funeral was large, which seemed to please my mother, but how Dad died was never actually spoken out loud. His death was simply called tragic. Again, the need to scream welled up inside me. If it hadn’t been for those little pills keeping me inside a gauzy haze, I’d have erupted right in the middle of the pastor’s speech and ruined the nice, tasteful day my mother had somehow pulled off.
When we returned home, our house started to fill with friends and neighbors, all offering their sympathy and more casseroles for the refrigerator. Mom, Emma, and I each stood stoically, nodding at them and saying thank you again and again. After they left, my head still felt like it was stuffed with cotton balls when Mom sat Emma and me down on the couch in the living room. By her expression, it was obvious she had something important to tell us.
“I thought the service was beautiful, didn’t you?” She watched us closely.
“Yeah, sure,” Emma scoffed. “Let’s do it again tomorrow.”
I winced. Mom was barely holding herself together. She didn’t need Emma making it worse.
Looking pale and exhausted, Mom sighed. Then she turned to me. “I’ve been talking with Russ and the chief. It’s time to tell you what’s going on, Sarah.” She started to say something but stopped, clasping her hands in her lap for a quiet moment before she tried again. “No one knows you were in the car that night,” she finally said. “No one knows what you saw. The police report has been altered to keep your name out of it.”
“What? Why?” Stunned, I sat up straighter.
“To protect you. If anyone knew you were in the car, there’s no telling what they might do. But if your name is left out of the official report, we have a better chance of making sure no one finds out what you saw. This is what your father would want. To know you were safe.”
“By lying?” I stared at her in complete disbelief. “Dad would never want that.”
“Sarah . . .” She said my name like she was expecting an argument but didn’t have the energy for it.
“You think if Jackson knew I saw his truck that night, he might hurt me?”
She didn’t answer.
“So they’re not arresting him? They’re not doing anything, even though we all know he killed Dad.” My hands sunk down into the couch cushion as I leaned toward her.
Mom’s lips trembled, but I didn’t care. I wanted answers, different answers.
“What about Spencer?” I demanded. “Jackson beats him. He could end up killing him one day too. Does anyone care about that?” I was yelling now with tears spilling down my face.
She started to cry softly.
“I can’t believe you’re even bringing him up.” Emma stood and loomed over me. “That’s why Dad is dead. Because he was trying to help Spencer, the boy you’ve had a pathetic crush on forever. If I even hear you say his name again, I swear to God, I’ll tell Jackson Pierce myself that you were in that car.”
“Emma!” Mom glared at her. “Stop that. We can’t start turning on each other now.”
“Spencer is why Dad was sitting at the intersection that night. It’s his fault and hers.” Emma aimed a finger at me. “You know it too. We all do. But no one wants to say it to her face.” Then Emma turned and ran up to her room.
I started to tremble again despite those stupid pills I’d taken. Jackson couldn’t have come after Dad that night because of me or Spencer. We hadn’t gotten the chance to talk to anyone about what Jackson was doing to him. But I couldn’t deny that we were on that dark road because of me. The things I told my father put him there.
Mom took my hand. “Emma’s just lashing out. It’s not your fault. I don’t think that. I hope you don’t either.”
I couldn’t look at her because I was afraid she didn’t mean it.
“We’re leaving, sweetheart,” she said beside my ear.
I turned to her then.
“We’re going to Michigan to stay with Aunt Linda,” she said as she smoothed a hand over my head.
“For how long?”
She hesitated. “We’re not coming back.”
I stared at her, trying to understand. Her eyes were shiny and wet, but they were steady.
“We’re running away? He gets to stay here and we have to leave? How can this be happening?” I pulled away from her, feeling like she and everyone else in this town were betraying Dad.
“Sarah, I have to sell the house. I can’t afford it on my own and it’s safer if we go. How will you feel the first time you run into that man in town?”
“No.” I shook my head back and forth. “This isn’t right. This isn’t what Dad would want at all.”
She sat up straighter. “I’m sorry. It’s what we’re doing.”
My eyes burned with more tears as I stood and backed away from her. This was so wrong. This was all so terri
bly wrong.
Then I walked right out of the house, ignoring her when she called me back. I started to run. My feet pounded down the walkway and out onto the road as I put the house behind me. I only noticed the light rain once I hit the beach. The ocean wind chilled me as I walked onto the sand, wondering if Spencer would be here. Torn, I was both hoping to see him and dreading the thought of finding him there like nothing ever happened, as if he hadn’t vanished on me that night after promising to wait.
I wasn’t sure of the time, but I figured it was late afternoon and school was out by now. Neither Emma nor I had been back to classes in over a week.
For some reason, when the dunes came into view and I saw Spencer standing there, I wasn’t surprised. A part of me knew he would be there. Instead of lying on the sand or slouching aloofly like he normally would, when he noticed my approach, he jogged toward me. My breath felt like ice in my lungs as I came to a stop, wondering how much he knew and why he hadn’t waited that night.
I felt ashamed that a part of me wanted to unleash my anger on him. I wanted to blame him the way Emma had blamed the both of us. It would be so easy to dump it all on him. To believe that if he’d stayed and waited for me like he’d promised, Dad and I wouldn’t have been in the car that night on the service road. But I knew it wasn’t true. If Spencer had waited, Dad would probably have taken him to see the social worker once Spencer told him about the abuse. It would have been him in the car instead of me.
“God, Sarah, I’m so sorry,” Spencer said once he stood before me. His dark hair blew around his face, and his eyes were filled with more emotion than I’d ever seen. His concern deepened as he looked me over. Then he tentatively reached up to my cheek and touched the edge of my bandage. “What’s this?” he asked.
I ignored his question. “You lied to me. You promised you’d wait.”
He had no reaction. That fueled the anger I didn’t want to feel for him.
“It was your uncle, Spencer. He killed my father.”
His eyes flared in surprise before he lowered his head. “I know.”
“You know?” I asked incredulously. “How do you know?”
