by Kerry Clare
“Whatever he did, I’m sorry,” Derek’s mom told Brooke. And Brooke wondered if she thought Brooke was one of the women he’d taken out behind the garbage bins at Slappin’ Nellie’s.
“It wasn’t like that,” she told her. “Nothing so bad that I’d require his mother to apologize, I mean.”
His mom said, “Mothers always end up doing the apologizing. So much so that their sons never notice they’ve done anything wrong.” She was making Brooke uneasy, but didn’t seem in a hurry to end this conversation either, slippers or no slippers. And Brooke could hardly just take off on her, having just been offered the gift of a car. Could she really just do that, get in the car and drive away like it was hers?
But in the meantime, she would have to stay here, have the conversation Ann Murdoch was itching to have.
“He’s had a hard time, though,” Brooke told his mom, echoing her words. Excusing Derek for the thousandth—last?—time. “With the fire.” It was strange standing here in the place where it had happened.
“The fire,” Derek’s mom repeated, not looking at Brooke now, her thoughts carrying her away toward something else a long time ago. “You know about the fire?” she asked, returning to where they were. She gestured toward the garage.
“But that’s a different garage.”
“It was rebuilt,” she said. “You might think nothing ever happened there.”
“I know what happened,” said Brooke. “Everyone knows.” It had all been in the news long before she was born, but the legend had come down through the years. They’d reprinted newspaper headlines in his profiles, the pictures of Derek in the hospital wrapped up in bandages. Brooke hadn’t been there, but she’d heard the story so often it was like she had been.
“He told you the story?” his mom asked.
Brooke said, “I know what everybody knows.” She waited, but Derek’s mom said nothing. Brooke said, “He saved them, his brother and his sisters. They were playing in there and something went wrong, lighter fluid or gasoline, and if it weren’t for him, they could have been killed.”
“If it wasn’t for him,” Ann Murdoch said, “it would never have started. No one talks about that.”
No one did. “Did he really?”
She said, “Kids being kids. It happens. We should have done a better job keeping stuff locked up. I don’t know where he got the matches. He never told me. He shouldn’t get all the blame—he was only eleven. But I think about that, with everything that’s gone on this week. I think about these stories we tell about people, but we leave out the details.”
“He started the fire?”
She said, “I don’t know. I shouldn’t even be talking about this. I don’t know why I want to. But it’s just that people have been knocking on my door all week long, and you’re the first person he said it was okay to open it to. I haven’t been talking to anybody. We stayed home from church yesterday. I’m just exhausted.”
“What happened?” Brooke asked, “with the fire?” Derek’s mom wanted to talk. She seemed desperate, and Brooke felt as though she was being held hostage, and if she could just keep the woman talking, she would get out of this okay.
“The other kids weren’t even in there,” she told Brooke. “He was playing, and he started something going, and I don’t think it was deliberate, and you know kids—they never understand the consequences of their actions. And then somehow the others were in there, and he was out here screaming, and I heard him. The phone was in the kitchen then, on the wall, and it was even before we had 911. I went to call the fire department, and I didn’t understand. Why would the little kids be in the garage? There was nothing doing in the garage. They had a slide back there, and a sandbox, and it was a beautiful day. I thought the garage was on fire, and that was one thing, but I had no idea that my babies were in there.”
“But he saved them,” said Brooke. A prompt. That part, at least, had to be true.
And it was. “He went back in there,” she told Brooke, “and came out with the girls, and I told him to stop, but he wouldn’t. He had this coat, this green jacket, and he brought his brother out—Carl was still so small. And then his jacket had melted. I didn’t understand that part either. I mean, the garage was on fire, but everything was fine, because there they were, one, two, three and four—and he was in shock, I think. And the whole coat had melted, third-degree burns. I didn’t realize. He really looked fine, but there was this terrible smell, and it was the jacket and his skin, and then the fire department was there—it was only minutes, really. Everything was done, and then there was nothing else to do about it.”
“Does he know?” Brooke asked her. “Maybe he doesn’t. You know, the shock. He might not remember.”
“He does,” she told her. “And Carl knew. Carl heard me calling for him not to go back in there to save him. To save himself. A person doesn’t get over that. I know he knows,” she said, “because we had Carl to remind us. Carl never forgot.”
She said, “He isn’t perfect—my son. Derek isn’t perfect. It’s the thing they always say after someone does something reprehensible, isn’t it? As though there was no other alternative but to be perfect, or to have done a bad, bad thing. If you can’t be perfect, well then what’s the point of even trying? But there are many degrees, aren’t there, between perfection and being a sinner. And who among us hasn’t sinned? It’s the better question. But there are degrees there too. It’s not all or nothing. And Derek had a hard time knowing that either way.”
“He was a kid,” said Brooke. Was it a sin to be a stupid kid playing with fire? Wasn’t that a rite of passage instead? Most people just get to escape the terrible consequences. And Derek had always been drawn to extremes—all or nothing, indeed. Truly, his upbringing had not afforded him a great appreciation for nuance, and Brooke was sure the woman before her in slippers right now would be willing to take some responsibility for that.
“He does his best,” Ann Murdoch told Brooke, looking just past her into a middle distance. “When he wants to, I mean. And then when he makes mistakes, he doesn’t know how to take responsibility for them. He never did. We coddled him too much, because he was so hurt for so long, and because of the pain he went through. I couldn’t be hard on him after that. Not after I’d seen what he’d had to suffer, and he had to live with what he’d done. Even after his body had healed, he was carrying that burden. He’s tried to make up for it in every way, except for owning up to it. I’m not making excuses,” she told Brooke. “It’s just that these are the excuses I’ve got.”
“You don’t have to defend him to me,” said Brooke.
Ann Murdoch said, “Oh, but I am sure I do.” Then she checked herself. “You should go,” she said.
“Where?” Brooke asked.
She answered, “That part is up to you.” She gestured toward the keys in Brooke’s hand. “He said you needed these.”
“To get out of town?”
“To go where you want to go.” Brooke clicked the fob and unlocked the door, and Derek’s mom opened it up wide. “Get in,” she said, and Brooke did, and then reached under to bring the seat forward and lock it into place. She knew this car, but had never sat on the driver’s side.
She put the key in the ignition and turned the engine on.
“For real?” she asked Derek’s mother again. All she had to do was put that car into reverse and back out in the street, and drive away. It was the first time Brooke could remember in such a long time with no limits. She could do whatever she wanted in the world.
Derek’s mom shrugged. Despite the epic story she’d just told, the expression on her face had remained unchanging, matter-of-fact. She closed the car door gently, and then turned around and plodded back up the steps and into her house, closing the front door behind her without another glance.
And then it was just Brooke, and a car, and roads ribboning out in every imaginable direction
from where she was idling now. She could choose any one of them, she realized. It was simply a matter of stepping on the pedal and deciding to go.
Or to stop.
Was it even as simple as that?
Because here was another option. Always, there would be other options. To turn off the ignition, get out, close the door. She could leave the keys in the mailbox, and set out on her very own steam.
Acknowledgments
Infinite gratitude to the booklovers—the heroic booksellers, avid readers, book bloggers, and bookstagrammers—who make my reading and writing life so much richer.
I am grateful to the amazing and inspiring Samantha Haywood for supporting my work and for finding it the perfect home at Doubleday Canada. To my editor, Bhavna Chauhan, from whom I have learned so much and whose excellent editorial suggestions brought my character to life—five minutes into our first conversation, I was already in love. Thanks to Melanie Little, Amy Black, Melanie Tutino, Terri Nimmo, Ruta Liormonas, and everyone at Doubleday Canada.
I am indebted to pop-duo Boy Meets Girl, whose catchy 1988 pop hit about unrequited love gave my book such a perfect title.
Many thanks to the friends who celebrated the news of this book with me—Andrew Larsen, Denise Cruz, Kripa Freitas, Nathalie Foy, Rebecca Rosenblum, Kate Wilczak (If I had a hammer?), Rebecca Dolgoy, Erin Smith, Katie Doering, Ann Douglas, May Friedman, Britt Leeking, and Jennie Weller. Thanks to Samantha Dempster for making everything gorgeous. Love to my Salonista pals. To Kiley Turner and Craig Riggs for my wonderful job at 49thShelf, deep in the world of Canadian books. To my coven—Karma Brown, Chantel Guertin, Kate Hilton, Elizabeth Renzetti, Jennifer Robson, Marissa Stapley—for casting great spells and being such excellent colleagues in the novel-writing trade.
I am grateful to my parents and sister for all their love and support, and to my children, Harriet and Iris, who always ask the most interesting questions and whose enthusiasm for books and reading matches mine. And finally, I owe everything to my husband, Stuart, who I was lucky to meet when I was twenty-three, who transformed my life into not just a love story, but also a grand adventure, and who once carried home a writing desk for me on his bike.
