He stared at her with such open curiosity for such a long time that she began to squirm. She kept reminding herself that although this was Cody, it wasn’t her Cody. The face and body looked the same, but the mind was damaged, the memories fragmented.
“We knew each other,” he said, picking up a picture of the two of them in his living room, hugging and mugging for the camera in front of last year’s Christmas tree. “We liked each other.” These were statements, not questions.
“You could say that. We liked each other a lot.”
He nodded. “You’re in a lot of my pictures.” He picked up several and fanned them out for her to see. They were younger in some of the photos, while others had been taken only weeks before. “Did I know you for a long time?”
“A couple of years. We started dating when we were sophomores.”
He hung his head. “I don’t remember.”
“It’s all right,” she said quickly. “The good news is that I can tell you how wonderful I am and you’ll believe me.”
The old Cody would have laughed, made some smart remark. This Cody simply stared. Finally a half-smile crept across his face. “You’re teasing me.”
“A little.” She picked up a photo of them at the Christmas dance. “We had an interesting time this night. You picked me up, and on the way we got a flat tire and—”
“Stop.” He looked upset and pressed his palms against his temples. “It hurts my head when I try to remember and can’t.”
She tossed the photo down quickly. “Sorry.” By now, she felt jumpy and nervous. She couldn’t even carry on a conversation with this Cody. He was a stranger.
“I’m not mad at you,” he said, his voice halting. “I don’t mean to sound angry.”
What had Gwyn suggested? Distract him. Change the subject. “Why don’t you tell me what you do remember? Maybe I can fill in the blanks for you.”
“There’re so many blanks. It’s like trying to put together a puzzle but without knowing what the finished picture’s supposed to look like.” His brow puckered. “I see things in my head but they don’t make sense to me.”
“It’s the same for me. But my senseless pictures are from the night of the accident.”
“Were you hurt badly?” he asked.
“Cuts and bruises mostly. I wobbled around on crutches for a while, but I’m finished with them now. I was lucky.”
“Mom told me about the accident. It’s funny that I can’t remember any of it, especially when it’s made so much difference in my life.” He looked sad. “I don’t remember it at all. When I close my eyes, I see …” He paused. “I see a pretty girl, but she isn’t you.”
Trisha fished through the photos. “This girl?”
“Yes. Mom told me she died in the wreck.”
He said it without emotion, which cut Trisha to the quick. “She was our friend. Her name is—was—Christina. We were on a double date that night.”
“That’s what Mom said.”
“What do you remember?”
“Now? I remember words, but not always in the order they’re supposed to go.”
“What about the past?”
“Coming home from school and playing Nintendo. I remember that really clearly. But Mom says that I haven’t played Nintendo since ninth grade. Next I remember waking up in the hospital. Everything in between is jumbled. The pictures flash in my head once in a while, but I can’t hang on to them. They fade.”
She felt discouraged. He had such a long way to go. “What about school? You’ve taken a lot of classes and tons of tests over the years. Will you have to start all over again?”
“I remember some of the stuff I learned in school. Mom says I’ll have to take some tests in a few weeks to see where I am. I just hope I can catch up if I’m really far behind.”
“You were pretty good in math.” She had an idea. Reaching for a pencil, she scribbled out an algebra problem.
He pondered it, took the pencil, and solved it.
She clapped. “That’s great! See? You haven’t forgotten everything.”
He looked at her, grinning sheepishly. “I don’t know how I did it, though. Or if I can do it again.”
“Your memory’s going to come back, Cody. I’ll help you. All our friends will help.” She took the pencil and wrote down her phone number. “Call me any time you want.”
He studied the piece of paper, then said the numbers aloud. “I probably knew this by heart, didn’t I?”
“And you will again.” She could tell he was tired, so she stood and told him she had to go. She didn’t want to leave him. She wanted to sit in his lap and cuddle in his arms. She wanted to kiss him.
He didn’t try to touch her. He just leaned back in his chair and looked her full in the face. “If you were my girlfriend, it shows I have good taste,” he said.
The compliment touched her. “Thank you.” She bowed slightly and he smiled fully. And for that moment, he was the Cody from her past. That gave her more hope than she’d known since before the accident.
The next day, during a yearbook work session, Trisha told Abby and Frank about her afternoon with Cody. The final drafts were supposed to be turned in by mid-April so that the school could have finished books by June. Trisha knew she hadn’t been pulling her weight as an editor, but the project had lost all importance to her. “He’s Cody, but he’s not Cody,” she said, finishing up her story. “It’s hard to explain.”
“When is he coming back to school?” Abby asked.
“Not for a while. His mother said she’s getting a home school teacher to help him. He has trouble concentrating. She doesn’t think he could sit still in classes all day either.”
“Hey, neither can I,” Frank said. “Maybe I can go over and get tutored with him.”
Abby slugged him in the arm. “Be serious.”
“I am.”
Trisha ignored their interruption. “He still sleeps a lot. It’s his brain’s way of healing itself, according to his mother. Right now, he needs time.”
“Problem is,” Abby said, “graduation is less than four months away. Can he catch up?”
“I don’t know. It’s depressing. Here he’s gone through twelve years of school and now he has to stop and play catch-up. All because of the accident.” Trisha rested her chin on her palm. “I never dreamed our senior year would turn out this way. I thought it was going to be perfect.”
Frank glanced at Abby. “We want to show you something that we hope will perk you up.” He got up, went to a stack of large manila envelopes, brought them back to the table, extracted pictures, and spread them out. “Abby and I worked on this for days with Mrs. Krebs.” She was the teacher overseeing production of the yearbook. “It’s a special two-page spread in the senior section honoring Christina. What do you think?”
Trisha gazed at candid and formal shots of her friend that spanned three years of high school. Christina hanging crepe paper in the gym for the junior dance. Christina wearing mismatched and garish clothes for senior dress-down day. Christina painting a mural on the senior wall next to the school office. Trisha and Christina singing a duet for choral competition as sophomores—they’d taken a “superior” in the contest. Christina and Tucker in the Homecoming Court. The memorial floral arrangement the student body and faculty had sent to Christina’s service.
“The pages will have a thick black border around them and a banner that says ‘In Memoriam’,” Abby added.
Emotion closed Trisha’s throat. Christina’s high school days had been reduced to a couple of pages that held such finality. It was a tribute to the past, to what was, to unrealized potential, to unfulfilled dreams. She cleared her throat. She couldn’t break down like this every time someone touched the wound on her heart. “It’s very nice,” she said.
“We thought that if there’s something special you’d like to add …” Frank let his sentence drift.
“No,” Trisha said. “You’ve done a good job. There’s nothing I can add.”
<
br /> “If you change your mind, this section doesn’t go to the press until tomorrow.”
“The pages are fine. Just fine.”
Trisha was setting the table for dinner that evening when the doorbell rang. “Can you get it?” her mother asked. “My hands are full.”
Trisha went to the door and found a policeman dressed in a gray uniform standing on the porch. “I’m Officer Harry Doyal of the Indiana Highway Patrol,” he said. “I’m looking for Trisha Thompson. I’m here to ask some questions about the night Christina Eckloe died.”
Fourteen
“I’m filing my final report,” Officer Doyal told Trisha and her mother once they were all settled in the living room. He pulled out a small tablet and a stubby pencil.
“What do you need to know?” Trisha’s mother asked. “My daughter was injured, but she was only a passenger in the car.”
“I’m just gathering information for the coroner’s inquest. Whenever someone dies on the road, we have to investigate all aspects of the accident.” He turned to Trisha. “Can you tell me what you remember about that night?”
“Not too much. We were headed to the Pizza Hut and the car went off the road. We ended up in a field. I was thrown out of the car and I was unconscious, but I don’t know for how long.” Elusive images still haunted her about the accident, but she couldn’t grab hold of them. She thought it best not to discuss what she couldn’t remember. The police only wanted the facts.
“What do you recall about the weather conditions?”
“It was cold but clear.”
“Any ice?”
“The road looked like it had been salted. But Tucker said he hit ice, so I guess there must have been some.”
“It could have been black ice,” her mother suggested, using the term for invisible slick spots of frozen oily film.
“Any moonlight?” the officer asked.
“Yes.”
Her mother interrupted. “Can’t you get that information from other sources?”
“Of course. However, I’m interested in Trisha’s perceptions of that night.” Officer Doyal turned back to Trisha and asked, “Would you say that Mr. Hanson was driving safely?”
She thought hard before answering. “I—I think so. We were going fast—”
“Too fast?”
“I couldn’t see the speedometer. I was sitting behind the driver’s seat so that I could talk more easily to my friend Christina in the front passenger seat.” She had a clear picture of Christina from the back. The console, with the gearshift, was between Christina and Tucker. Trisha had a sudden image of Tucker downshifting. “Cody, my boyfriend, asked Tucker to slow down and he did,” Trisha said.
“Why did Cody ask him to slow down? Do you remember?”
“There was another car full of guys that pulled alongside of us. They started horsing around, going past us and slowing down, then speeding up if we tried to pass them.”
“So this other car was giving Mr. Hanson a hard time?”
“Sort of. But we were ignoring them.”
“And then what happened?”
Trisha concentrated on getting a clearer picture of the moments before the accident. “I … don’t … know. All of a sudden we were skidding, and then things went dark for me. I’m sorry, I can’t remember any more.” She felt as if she’d somehow failed Christina. “Maybe the guys in the other car saw more of what happened.”
“I’ve already interviewed them. Their story’s pretty much the same.”
“Perhaps Cody can tell you more,” Trisha’s mother said.
“I’ve already talked to Mr. McGuire, but his parents insist that his head injury prevents him from remembering the accident at all.”
“That’s true,” Trisha said, anxious to protect Cody. “He’s been in a coma and can’t remember the past few years, much less the night of the accident.”
“Have you talked to Tucker yet?” Trisha’s mother asked.
“He’s next,” Officer Doyal said.
“And then what will happen?” Trisha asked.
“I’ll file my report and a judge will review it. If he thinks there was any neglect on the driver’s part, he’ll rule the accident a vehicular homicide.”
Trisha gulped. “You mean Tucker could go to jail?”
“That depends on a lot of other factors—his driving record, his character, his testimony. The judge has plenty of leeway, and Tucker’s family has a good attorney.”
“But Trisha won’t be asked to testify, will she?” her mother asked. “I mean, you heard her say so yourself: she doesn’t remember any details.”
“That’s up to the judge, ma’am.”
“How long before we know anything?”
“That depends on how crowded the court docket is and how soon we can get everything in place for a hearing.” The officer fished out a business card and stood. “If you think of anything else, please call me. You take care, Trisha. I’m sorry about your friend. I understand she was a fine girl.”
Trisha nodded; then her mother walked with Officer Doyal to the door.
Trisha remained on the sofa, feeling numb. She kept remembering the conversations she’d had with Tucker about the accident. He had asked her questions. What had she told him? Had he been trying to find out what she remembered so that he could vent and grieve? Or did he have a different motive? One that included protecting himself?
She shook her head, unable and unwilling to dwell on that idea. Tucker had loved Christina. If he was one bit responsible for her death, he’d admit it … wouldn’t he? If only she could remember more details. If only.
“If he’s got nothing to hide, why does Tucker need a lawyer?” This was Trisha’s first question to Abby when she found her at her locker before school the next morning.
“Standard procedure,” Abby said. “And besides, Tucker told you his family had a lawyer already.”
“I know, but after talking to the cop, I started to wonder about it. Maybe he’s covering up something.”
“I’m sure it’s routine, Trisha. My dad even got a lawyer when Carson died and there wasn’t any other car involved. But he wanted to make sure that the car was in working order—it had been in the shop just the week before. He wanted a lawyer to represent Carson’s best interests, because we were so devastated we couldn’t think straight.” She spun the dial on her combination lock. “As it turned out, the autopsy proved that he’d fallen asleep at the wheel. I don’t know how they can be so sure of that, but they were. So the accident was just an accident.”
“I keep thinking I’m not remembering everything, like if I can just get a handle on these pictures that keep flashing through my mind, I’ll know exactly what happened. It’s making me crazy.”
“Don’t be so down on yourself. It’s hard, because you really want to blame somebody for it and there may be nobody to blame.”
“It isn’t fair. We got into Tucker’s car that night to come home from a basketball game. The accident should never have happened.”
“Hey, don’t be upset.” Abby reached over and squeezed Trisha’s hand. “Of course it isn’t fair. But don’t beat yourself up trying to figure out why it happened. Just accept that it happened and there was nothing you could have done to stop it.”
“I hope that’s true.”
“Bad things happen,” Abby said, “and sometimes it’s nobody’s fault. When I was going through losing Carson, my mantra became a quote I read in a card somebody sent. It was: ‘That which doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger.’ You may not believe it now, Trisha, but this will make you stronger too.”
“But a whole lot sadder,” Trisha added. “Oh, Abby, so much sadder.”
On Saturday, with Gwyn’s permission, Trisha visited Cody again. The March day had turned springlike, with temperatures in the fifties. Sunshine shimmered through still-bare tree branches. She and Cody found a spot on the back deck of his house, sheltered from any chilling breezes by a short brick wall. They lifted their faces toward
the warming rays of the sun.
“They say this is bad for us,” Trisha commented. “That the sun causes skin cancer.”
“I don’t care. It feels good, and I’m going stir-crazy being stuck inside the house all the time.”
“I don’t care either.” At the moment, cancer didn’t seem like half the threat that everyday life did. She asked, “Did you know that spring break’s in a few weeks? Some of the seniors’ parents have rented a bus to take a group to Florida. Everyone has to pay their own way, but there’s a nice place to stay right on the beach.”
“Are you going?”
If Christina had been alive, they would probably all have been going. “No,” Trisha said.
“Do you want to go?”
Not without you, she thought. “It wouldn’t be much fun for me.”
“I’d like to go somewhere … anywhere. But Mom won’t let me out of her sight.”
Trisha knew from talking to Gwyn that Cody was still not in any shape to go anywhere. He got confused easily and lost his temper frequently. His comeback was slow, taking longer than she had ever imagined. “How’s the tutoring going?” she asked.
“All right some days. Not so good others. Sometimes I read a page in a book and it makes perfect sense. Other times, it’s gibberish. I lost it the other day and threw the book across the room. The tutor wasn’t real happy about that.” He glanced over at her. “How’s real school?”
“I feel like I’m wandering the halls and filling up chairs in classes. I really don’t care about it anymore.”
“But you have to care. Your head’s fine.”
She smiled ruefully. “You think so? Some days I’m not so sure.”
He looked puzzled, then smiled. “You’re joking again.”
“Just a little.” She felt sad around him, as if he was missing in action and someone had sent an impostor to take his place. Yet she couldn’t give up on him. It wouldn’t be right to abandon him just because he was different now. Just because he couldn’t remember their past together and all they’d meant to each other.
“Could I ask you a favor?”
Keep Me in Your Heart Page 19
