Once Blake went inside to get his keys, Sam turned and stared at us.
“You’re ruining our wedding,” she said. “Why can’t you just leave us alone? We want the chance to have what you have. We want to have a perfect life too.”
“A perfect life?” Amanda said.
“The baby, the house. Everything you do and share on social media, it’s so perfect. We were going to lose that if Jennifer shared the truth about the accident. Even just my parents finding out has ruined so much. But it’s not the end for us. After all, Aaron already went to jail for the crime. And those letters . . . they’re long gone. Burned. Gone. Who will they believe now?”
“I told the cops everything I know,” I said.
Sam waved me away, a dismissal.
“Our life isn’t perfect, Sam,” I said. “Far from it. That seems pretty obvious.”
“Well, it sure as hell looks that way.”
Blake came back and took Samantha by the hand, and the two of them moved off behind the Barn, where a few cars were parked, including a black SUV that belonged to Sam. They dashed away, leaving Amanda and me standing in their wake.
“Are we just going to stand here and watch them go?” Amanda asked.
“No,” I said.
I took a step forward, but then I heard the sirens.
I looked back and saw the police coming up the long driveway. . . .
Blake drove the SUV around the far side of the Barn and then reemerged, heading down the driveway. In the direction of the police.
Amanda and I watched from a distance.
She reached out and grabbed my hand, her nails digging into my flesh.
I wanted to shout, to tell Blake to stop. But he seemed to be speeding up as they approached the cops.
The police cars skidded to a stop, angling across the driveway and blocking the way.
Then Blake slammed on the brakes, making the tires squeal.
He backed the SUV up fifty feet, and then paused.
“My God, Ryan, do you see that?” Amanda asked.
“I do. He’s going to ram them.”
“No, Ryan. He can’t. . . .”
But it looked like he was going to do it. Like he was going to slam his foot down on the accelerator and fire forward, either plowing through the cops or hoping they would move out of the way.
Or maybe causing a fiery crash.
Was that how this would end? Another car accident?
And I felt powerless to do or say anything. Blake wasn’t my friend. He wasn’t anything to me anymore.
But did I want to watch him die? And take others down with him?
For a suspended moment, the vehicles faced each other, cops on one side and Blake and Sam on the other. No one made a move.
Through the windshield I saw Sam waving her arms around, urging Blake to do something. She seemed to be pleading.
Then the driver’s-side window of the SUV came down, and Blake’s arm came out. Sam was shaking her head. The sleeve of his suit and the crisp white cuff. Something metallic dangled from his fingers. He dropped the keys onto the driveway. And his hands came out the window in surrender.
Two cops emerged from their vehicles, hands near their weapons. They moved slowly toward Sam’s car, like soldiers on patrol, and then ordered the two of them to step outside.
One cop went to each side of the SUV, and when Blake and Sam came out, the cops took them and moved them up against the car. It took me back to my own experience outside their duplex when the cops pushed me up against the siding and searched me.
Except it hadn’t happened to me in my wedding suit.
The cops patted them down and placed cuffs on them. For attempting to flee the scene . . . and then everything that they would now be able to prove.
Despite my desire to be done with Blake forever, I felt bad for them. Embarrassed.
Although I shouldn’t have. They’d both done horrible things and had finally been caught.
That was when Amanda let go of my hand and nudged me.
“Are you seeing this, Ryan?”
I thought she meant the arrest. How could I not? But then I followed her gaze and saw what she meant.
The wedding guests, who had been sitting inside patiently waiting for the ceremony to start, had come out of the Barn, and they stood fanned out across the lawn. They all gawked at the spectacle happening before them.
And most of them, almost all of them, held their phones up before their faces, filming and taking photos of Blake and Sam being led over to and then placed into the back of a police cruiser in their wedding clothes. A cop placing his hand on Sam’s perfectly styled hair to make sure she didn’t hit her head as he maneuvered her in.
No one stepped forward to offer help. No one said anything.
They filmed and photographed. And looked happy to be doing it.