The knock that came at the door that Sunday morning still echoed in my brain. For a brief second, I wondered who could possibly visit at such a strange time, but I had my own problems to focus on.
How was I going to hide my swollen eye from Mom? She hated it when Dean and I fought. As mad as I was at him for chatting with Sarah, I didn’t want to get him into trouble.
I listened for stirring from his room but heard nothing. He’d probably been out partying with Blake and spent the night over there. When he did that, though, he tried to sneak in before sunrise to avoid getting caught.
Twice, our parents had already called up the steps to see if we were getting dressed for church. A graduation party the night before was no excuse for us to skip. If anything, it was more a reason we had to go. No telling what sins we had committed out of their sight. If Dean wasn’t back yet—and the lack of answering from his room said that was probably true—things would be tense around the house.
And now the knock suggested we had a neighbor with loose cattle or coyote troubles. The sound of the front door opening drifted up the steps. Then my mother wailed.
I jumped out of bed, pulled on a pair of sweat pants, and clambered down the steps just in time to see my father slump to the floor in shock. A uniformed deputy stood at the door, clutching his hat in his hands. He looked up at me, but I didn’t want to hear what he had to say.
Instead, I raced back up the stairs and pushed open the door to Dean’s room. The trophies lined the shelves above his desk. Notebooks from the just-completed year were stacked on the corner of the desk. The cover on his bed was neatly tucked, not slept in the night before.
I turned, ran across the hall, and slammed my door shut behind me. I stayed there, crying and moaning in grief, until the sunlight faded. The first day without Dean in the world ended. I hadn’t thought I would ever eat again, but I surprised myself by realizing I was hungry. I slipped down the steps on bare feet.
Mom looked up from her old wingback chair in the front parlor, her eyes red and puffy. When she saw the bruise on the side of my head, her eyes widened. I braced myself to explain, but she didn’t want to know. Instead, she asked, “Want me to fix you some dinner?”
A plethora of casseroles lined the counter. The grief machine of Miller County was in full swing. I had spent enough time indoors growing up, so I knew my way around a kitchen. “I’ll warm something.”
Normally, she would have insisted. She prided herself on keeping things in the McDougal house organized. Instead, she stared at the wadded tissue in her hand and nodded.
My father, slumped in his desk chair in the rear parlor, never looked up. I selected the closest casserole I saw. I didn’t think I could taste a thing, so didn’t care about the contents. After I stuck it into the oven to warm, I leaned against the sink near the open window.
On the front porch, neighbors sat in rocking chairs, talking in low voices. Snippets of their conversations floated through the window.
“What a tragedy.”
“Poor Libby without her son.”
“How can Skeeter keep things running without Dean’s help?”
“Crops need tending, and they can’t wait.”
“Freddie is going to have to put down his silly guitar, roll up his sleeves, and learn to farm.”
In my grief, I hadn’t thought about what would happen next. Were they right? Would I be forced to give up my dreams? My plan to leave Millerton at the end of the summer got accelerated.
For the next two days, I stayed in my room and packed my clothes in an old duffel bag I’d found tucked away in Dean’s closet, something he’d used to carry equipment to practice over the years. It smelled of his sweat, but I didn’t mind.
I rarely left my room and spoke with almost no one. Not Sarah. Not Xander. Certainly none of Dean’s friends who streamed in and out of the house. My parents busied themselves with funeral arrangements and greeting the many visitors stopping by with their condolences.
A detective from the sheriff’s department visited me with questions. When did I last see Dean? What did we say to each other? What caused the fight? Who else was there?
I said as little as I could. The fight was typical sibling rivalry, nothing else. The last I’d seen of Dean was him driving away from the graduation party. After that, I’d come home and fallen asleep. I didn’t know anything else.
I wasn’t trying to avoid talking to them. At least, no more than I ever avoided talking to anyone. Besides, what difference did it make? What I was doing when Dean crashed didn’t matter.
He asked my parents questions too. My mother assured the deputy that she knew I was home. She didn’t, of course. She hadn’t seen me come home. We never spoke that night.
I never wondered why the deputies asked where I was that night. In my grief and rage, I had assumed the accident had been wholly Dean’s fault. It had all been a stupid accident. I didn’t want to dwell on it.
But knowing Dean wasn’t drunk changed everything. Questions I should have asked in the first place exploded.
While Dad slept, Mom quietly searched through the desk drawers for a copy of the accident report. She came back onto the porch and plopped into her chair empty-handed. “I can’t find it. Maybe he shredded it. He threatened to often enough.”
My stomach knotted in frustration. She had tried to explain to me what the report said, but I wanted to read it for myself. “Why would he get rid of it?”
She looked out toward the horizon. “When they told us about the autopsy, it about destroyed us. We were happy he hadn’t been drunk, but then the whole accident made less sense. We read and reread the report, but that made it even harder to accept. And the pictures…”
I swallowed. “You saw accident photos?”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t. They had them, but I didn’t want to see. But Skeeter…”
“Dad saw them.”
She nodded and wiped tears off her face. “Only a few. Then he had to stop. It crushed him.”
“What did the reports say?”
When she couldn’t bring herself to answer, I used my phone to pull up the highway patrol’s website. As I suspected, accident reports were online, but the available records didn’t go back seventeen years. I needed to find out how long it would take to get physical copies. I was searching for the phone number for the local office when Mom stopped me.
“I’ve got a better idea.” She called the sheriff’s office and asked if they could help get the information from the state. The sergeant who’d answered the phone offered to see what he could find. He promised to call my cell as soon as he had an answer.
Within an hour, my phone rang. When I put it on speaker, we were both surprised. “This is Sheriff David Newman.” Another advantage of a small, rural county.
After a few pleasantries, I explained how Mom thought he might be able to help me get copies of Dean’s accident report from the highway patrol. His answer was better than I had expected.
He explained they had investigated the accident jointly with the highway patrol. The patrol had jurisdiction for the traffic accident, so they took the lead. The sheriff’s office, though, had been on scene first and had the local knowledge and manpower to talk to people who had seen Dean the night before. “The good news is that means we have copies of the files here in our office. If you give me an hour or so, I can have our files pulled and confirm with them that they don’t have anything additional. Then come on down, and I’ll review it all with you.”
So I cleaned up and headed into town.
As I passed the cemetery on the way into town, I slowed and noticed the church parking lot was empty. After avoiding Dean’s grave for so many years, it made no sense to visit twice in two days, but it drew me in. A quick check of my watch told me I needed to take some time to give the sheriff a full hour.
Coming home had stirred up so many memories and feelings I’d thought I had buried long ago. In the brief time I had been back in Miller County, though, I’d started to question whether I really remembered correctly.
Not just whether Dean was drunk. At least I had an excuse for not knowing that. I saw him leave with his buddies, friends he would toss back a few beers with. And he’d spent the night at Blake’s, the place he always went when he’d been out drinking and didn’t want our parents to find out. My assumption had been logical.
But what about taking me riding on his ATV? Getting into trouble for it and refusing to throw me under the bus? Sneaking me magazines he wasn’t even supposed to have? Even jumping to my defense when Blake and his friends bullied me? Photos on his wall of the two of us together?
I sat on the grass beside his headstone, absentmindedly tracing the letters spelling out beloved brother.
What really happened that night?