I WATCHED THE clock on the hospital wall. Time ticked by, hour after hour. They’d put me in a quiet little waiting room near the intensive care unit. Steve was in surgery. I figured as long as he was in surgery, he was still alive. I held on to that.
I replayed those last minutes when the paramedics were loading him into the ambulance. He hadn’t moved when I put my hand on his shoulder and leaned over him. “Steve. Hang in there, buddy. I’ll be right behind you.”
Nothing. Not a moan or a blink of his eyes. He breathed slowly and weakly, like he was slipping away.
Jessica had arrived on the scene with her partner at the same time as the ambulance. She’d studied me with her gentle blue eyes. Jessica was getting good at reading my mind.
“You go to the hospital. I’ll catch you there after I’ve examined the scene.”
The hospital was twenty-five miles away. I’d pushed my old pickup down the highway as fast as I dared. By the time I reached the hospital, Steve was being prepared for surgery.
“Who’s his next of kin?” a clerk asked.
Without thinking, I’d said, “Me.” Then blood had rushed to my head, and I’d had to lean on the counter.
The clerk had given me a suspicious look. She was from back home, and she knew I had no next of kin—or, at least, kin that would speak to me. But she gave me some papers to sign and told me to sit in the waiting room. Someone would come out to talk to me. Eventually.
Pacing the waiting room, I thought about everything Steve had gone through. The wars in Afghanistan, the death of his mother, the news of his father. I thought about how he’d cleaned up my sheds and made eggs in the morning and scratched Chevy’s ears. I thought about coming downstairs in the morning to the smell of fresh coffee, served with a big, hopeful grin.
And I realized what we meant to each other. Family. History. A place in this world.
Don’t die on me, brother! I begged as the clock ticked on.
When the doctors wheeled Steve out, they weren’t making any promises. They talked about putting more pins in his leg, taking out parts of his insides, opening up his skull. They were patient and understanding with me, but I could hardly make sense of the words. I just nodded and wished Jessica was with me.
She came just as dawn was peeking over the rooftops. She was still in her uniform, and she looked worn out, but she managed a hug for me.
“Sergeant Hurley will be along later this morning to take a statement from you,” she said. “He’s called in a full investigation team.”
“Because of Tommy?”
She hesitated. Pulled at her fingers. “What was Steve’s mood when you last saw him?”
I felt sick. We’d argued, and he’d driven off in a state. Drunk and looking for a fight. “Not good,” I mumbled. “What? You think he drove off the road on purpose?”
“There were some bits of broken glass and debris on the road. His truck has a broken right taillight. Was it like that before?”
“Steve loved that truck. He’d have fixed it right away. It was probably broken in the crash.”
She was silent. My heart pounded. “What are you saying?”
“There was another set of tire marks on the shoulder too.”
A chill shot through me. “Someone drove him off the road?”
“That’s for the investigation team to decide. It’s a narrow road, and it gets dark as pitch at night. The evidence suggests he was there since yesterday.” She looked at me. “What was Steve doing on that road, Rick?”
I tensed. Her voice was gentle, but it sounded like an interrogation. “He was going to visit my grandparents.”
She didn’t look surprised. Like she’d already guessed. “Then he’d already been there. He was driving away.”
My brain finally started putting pieces together. He’d visited my grandparents, probably had a fight with Tommy and driven off in a rage. With Tommy hot on his heels.
I started to shake. Jessica put her arm around me. “Have you eaten anything?”
When I shook my head, she stood up. “I have to call Hurley, and I could use a coffee. I’ll get us both something from the cafeteria.”
I knew I couldn’t eat, but I didn’t argue. I wanted time to get myself together.
After she left I heard heavy footsteps coming down the hall. A second later Tommy appeared in the doorway. I rose from my seat.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“How is he?”
“Alive. No thanks to you.”
He looked relieved. “I told you, I was doing CPR. I probably saved his miserable life, you jerk.”
“Yeah? What about when you ran him off the road? You left him to die, just like you did—”
“I did no such thing!”
“They found tire tracks! They’ll examine your truck!”
His eyes grew wide. He looked cornered.
“He came to the house, didn’t he? He asked you about Wes’s death. Probably said you killed him. You’ve been keeping this crazy secret for more than thirty-four years, and you weren’t about to pay for it now. So you chased him down and drove him off the road.”
Tommy paced the little room. “It didn’t happen that way. It was an accident.”
“You smashed into his truck!”
“He cut me off and slammed on his brakes. I couldn’t stop.”
“Why would he do that?”
“He was psycho. He fired at me out his window! I was just trying to outrun him.” He paused. “Man, that guy can drive!”
My brain spun. Refused to take it in. “Then why didn’t you call the cops? Why did you just leave him there? A whole day he lay down there, bleeding out.”
“I didn’t know he’d flipped his truck! It was dark, and he had a gun!” Tommy took a deep breath to calm down. “I knew if I called the cops, it would bring up all the old crap about Wes’s death again. I decided I’d just get the hell out, and if the cops came, they’d put it down to an accident. He was drunk, and lots of people lose control on that curve.”
I stared at him. Was that possible? It was the longest speech he’d ever made to me. He had to be really scared. “Then why did you come back?”
“Because you told me he was missing. I thought I should check on him.”
“To make sure he was dead.”
He grew red. “No. To see if he was there. If he needed help.”
I wasn’t sure I believed him, but I was too tired to think. Besides, I had other questions. “What was the old crap about Wes’s death?”
“Jesus, let’s not dig up all this again. You know!”
“No, I don’t know! I know you were with him. I know you and my mother left him to die alone and never said a word. I know that for a whole week the coyotes and crows had a field day.”
“It’s not quite true we never said a word. Your mother told Hurley.”
It was my turn to be shocked. I stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
“Hurley knew. At least, your mother said she told him. He had a thing for her, and she figured he’d go easy on her.”
“She was sixteen!”
“Hurley wasn’t much older. Only on the job a few months.”
I shut my eyes. I wished I could shut off my brain too. But thirty-four years was too long. “What happened that night, Uncle Tommy?”
He stood up to go. “I told you to leave it be. Wes and your mother are both dead.”
“Then it won’t matter to them. But it matters to me. Did you ram him? Was it deliberate?”
He froze. “What the hell? No! We were joyriding. Going way too fast. He lost control.”
“Was my mother on the snowmobile with him?”
He looked away.
“Was she hurt?” I grasped at straws. “Knocked out?”
“No, she jumped off.”
I thought about that. “She jumped off and let him go over the ravine.”
“She was lucky, Rick. She wasn’t drunk like he was.”
“Whose idea was it to just leave him there?”
“Well, we had to, right? There were no cell phones in those days. We went into town to call the cops.”
“Did you check on him? See if he was alive?”
He hesitated. “Yeah, he was alive. But your mother…she wanted to get the hell out. She knew she’d be in big trouble if our mother found out.”
“She was pregnant with his child! Didn’t that count for something?”
He shot me a glance. “She was sixteen, Rick.”
“So she called Hurley.”
“And nothing happened.” He bowed his head in defeat. “So after a week I rode back up there and pretended to find him.”
I heard light footsteps in the hall. Jessica was on her way back. What the hell was I going to tell her? My mother was dead, but her boss, months from retirement, was still very much alive. Did he have blood on his hands?