26

They had both wakened at the sound of the crash, though they hadn’t known what it was. They found themselves lying in a listening silence, hearkening to an unremembered sound.

“What was it?” Emma asked, sitting up.

“Some kind of …,” Peter said. Her sitting up made him get out of bed. He didn’t know what it was. They both put on bathrobes and slippers, moving quietly. They went downstairs. The moon was full, and each room they passed was filled with its cold light. The nighttime silence was oddly alarming. They went out the back door, onto the deck. In the road, up the hill on the other side of the hedge, was a big vague light. They moved toward it.

“Where’s the car?” Emma asked, as they crossed the driveway. Peter didn’t bother to answer: the car’s absence seemed minor then, something that could be set aside, explained later.

But it was not minor, and each discovery after that was worse. Out in the road, in the terrible gray moonlight, Peter saw something motionless at the curve. At first he couldn’t understand it, couldn’t read the dark shape. The strange light flooded the hedge, the tree. Everything was still and silent, but even so there was a sense of recent violence. They began to hurry: now he could see that the shape was a car, lying on its side. Its dark metallic underside was facing them, its nose was buried deep in the trunk of the maple.

The poor people, he thought. He felt compassion for them, these strangers, whoever they were.

Ah, but each thing he saw was worse, sickeningly worse. The car, as he approached it, as they came around its back end, became a Volvo, familiar, theirs. Incomprehensibly theirs. On its side, its headlights—oddly subdued—blared into the hedge. No sound came from it, no sound. A figure knelt at the side of the road, its back to them. The figure’s arms hung down at its sides: this shape too was familiar.

“Amanda?” Peter said. She turned. In the bloody glare from the tail-lights he saw a long red abrasion on her cheek. Her face was bruised and muddy. She looked at him, dazed and silent, her eyes dull. He had never seen such a look. His heart tightened with fear.

“Are you all right?” he asked, touching her shoulder.

Amanda made a strange sound and flinched violently, pulling away from him. “Don’t.”

“What happened?” Peter asked, frightened.

“We crashed,” Amanda said.

“Is it your shoulder?” Peter asked, touching her more gently. She nodded, squeezing her eyes shut. We, thought Peter.

“Who was with you?”

Amanda nodded at the car. Peter turned to look. Emma was at the car. The headlights lit up the trunk of the tree, and the dense mosaic of the privet hedge beyond. The dashboard lights were on. Peter heard her voice. It did not sound like Emma.

“Oh,” she said, her voice breaking on the single syllable.

Peter turned back to Amanda. “Is Tess in there?” he asked.

Staring dully at the car, Amanda nodded slowly.

In her bathrobe, Emma climbed slowly inside the car, through the open window. Peter left Amanda and went to the car. Emma was down inside it, her head down. He couldn’t see.

“Is she all right?” he asked. His heart was thundering. Emma shifted, and he could see something inside the car, pressed against the windshield. Fear filled him, panic, but he refused it: this was the wrong shape, the wrong color, to be Tess. This was crumpled, glittering with dark fluid.

“Call nine-one-one and bring me a blanket,” Emma said. In the second before he could answer she said, “Go! Go!”

In the silent kitchen he turned on the sudden lights and dialed. He stood waiting, alone in the house, feeling the signal that he had sent go out through the night, across the waters. He waited. He could feel his heart inside the cavity of his chest, huge, terrified, thundering along. He would make things right by force of will.

A woman’s voice said, “Nine-one-one.”

“I want to report an accident,” Peter said clearly, proud of himself.

“What kind?”

“A car accident,” he said. He wondered suddenly if that were accurate: there was the car, the tree, the girls. But was that what you called it, a car accident?

“Anyone hurt?”

“Yes,” Peter heard himself say.

“How many people are hurt?”

“Two,” Peter said, “children.” His throat closed on the word.

“Where are they?” Peter gave her directions, and his name.

“Hold on,” she said. “Do not hang up.”

The line went silent. Peter held on to the telephone tightly. He felt the seconds tick through his body. He thought of Emma out in the darkness, her bathrobe spreading around her like a cloak as she climbed down into the dark well of the car. With every second this wait became worse. He felt like shouting into the phone, Hurry. Hurry.

The woman returned. “Don’t move them,” she said. “Do you understand? Don’t pull them from the car, don’t shift their positions in any way. You could damage their spines. Don’t pick them up.”

“All right,” Peter said. He wondered if Emma had pulled Tess out.

“Keep them warm. They’re in shock. Wrap them in blankets without moving them. The police are on their way, and an ambulance. A helicopter team is on alert. The police will decide if you need the helicopter. If you do, it will arrive within thirteen minutes of the call.”

“Yes,” said Peter, “good.” He loved this woman devoutly. He pictured her, sitting by the telephone, on her nocturnal vigil. She sat before a cluttered desk. There were phones, radio transmitters, a computer. She was in her fifties, short graying hair. Glasses. He loved her.

“Do you know the names of the victims?”

He hesitated: it was the last moment before he had to acknowledge this, name it. He told her. The sound of their names was terrible.

“And are you Peter Chatfield?”

“Yes,” he said. “How did you know?”

“Your phone listing came up on my screen,” she said. “What is your relationship to the victims?”

“Father,” Peter said. In his mouth the word felt like a confession. He heard it resonate with guilt. It struck a vast gong, and now all the world knew. It had been his responsibility, his fault.

“I’m sorry,” said the woman, but she went right on. The name of his doctor, medical insurance, addresses. Peter answered all her questions dutifully, part of his brain wondering how he would apologize, how he would explain to her, afterward, that none of this had happened, and the girls were asleep, upstairs, in their beds. He saw Tess there, vividly. She slept often on her back, her head turned sharply to one side, one palm open on the pillow. That was how she would be now, really.

After Peter hung up with the nine-one-one woman, he went upstairs for the blankets, leaping the steps three at a time. In Tess’s room he turned on the light switch and looked: she might be in her bed, she might, this might easily be a mistake. Amanda could have gotten it wrong, he had misunderstood. The bed was tossed, empty. He pulled the blanket off, the quilt. He ran back downstairs, out into the terrifying night.

When he returned to the car Emma was inside it, leaning strangely from the window. He kept his eyes on her face as he gave her the blanket. He did not dare look down inside the car.

“The police and ambulance are on their way. The helicopter is on alert. Wrap them up but don’t move them, don’t shift them in any way, it could damage their spines.”

Emma said nothing, taking the blanket with her and vanishing back inside the darkness of the Volvo. Peter took the quilt over to Amanda. She was now standing, facing the tipped car. One arm was held across her chest, the other hung limp at her side.

“Let me wrap you up,” Peter said. He set the quilt carefully around her shoulders. She winced again and made a sound. He wrapped her lightly and stood behind her, feeling the solid rise of her young woman’s body before him. He felt fear, a sense of waste. He thought of Byron: She walks in beauty, like the night of something climes and starry skies. He opened his mouth. He was panting with fear. This was his daughter.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I missed the turn,” Amanda said.

“You were driving?” he asked, sickened.

He saw her nod.

“Is your arm all right?” he asked.

“I can’t move it,” she said. She sounded hopeless. Very carefully Peter kissed the top of her head, he could not hug her. At that, the touch of his mouth on her hair, he felt her sob, and she leaned slightly back, against him.

The ambulance, thrilling its nasal cry, appeared around the corner, drew up, stopped. A circling red light threw urgent beams onto the scene, alarming, disorienting. Two men in dark jackets jumped out of the ambulance and came over to Peter.

“She’s inside the car,” Peter said. Emma appeared in the car window and began to climb carefully out. In the lurid shifting rays of the ambulance light her hair was wild, her eyes gleamed, she looked demonic.

The man climbed carefully into the car. A police car pulled up behind the ambulance. The policeman got out and came over to Emma. He put his hand on her elbow and walked her over to Peter. It was a local man, John Garth. Peter knew him. They sometimes fished together, on the beach, in the evenings. Now, in this erratic scarlet light, Garth was a stranger, his manner stiff and official.

“Over here, please, Mrs. Chatfield,” he said, herding her away from the car. His arms were raised, curved, open. “Keep back.”

“No,” Emma said, pulling away from him. “That’s my daughter.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, I’ll have to keep you away while the emergency crew is working on her.” Garth had a thick brown mustache, and he wore sunglasses. Sunglasses, thought Peter, at four o’clock in the morning. Peter took Emma’s arm, pulling it close to him. The policeman stood in front of them, his arms up, his body a shield from the sight of the car. He kept turning, himself, to look over his shoulder.

Emma stood by Peter’s side. She did not look at Amanda.

The second man from the ambulance approached the Volvo, carrying a small stretcher, and a bag. The ambulance headlights were trained on the car, and a big lamp had been set on the ground nearby. In the frightening glare the men worked quickly. Garth asked Peter and Emma to stay where they were. His eyes sought Peter’s, as the one he could trust. Peter nodded, and Garth went over to speak to the rescue workers. He stood wide legged, still blocking the view. He unhitched his walkie-talkie from his belt and spoke into it in a low voice.

Beyond Garth, around his body, they saw Tess, strapped now to a short board, lifted into the light. Wide white tapes held her tightly to the board; her nightgown was dark and brilliant. As her body rose into the light of the flares, Peter could see, like a terrible secret, that her head was dark, covered in blood.

They laid her on the larger, waiting stretcher with its open blanket. They lapped the blanket closed over her small form, so slight it vanished underneath the cloth. Peter could see her face, glistening, dark. Over her face was a mask, covering nose and mouth.

Tess, strapped down, began to struggle. In the glare they could see her head jerking, her shoulders twitching horribly. Emma started toward her, and the policeman moved back to bar her way.

“Let me by,” said Emma, her eyes on Tess.

“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to keep back. The rescue squad is going to take her down to the airstrip. We’re waiting for the helicopter right now. They want both girls, and the helicopter will hold only one more person. If you want to go with them, now’s the time to go and get ready.”

But they were hypnotized by the sight of Tess. Under the blanket she thrashed fiercely, her head jerking, shoulders twisting, as though she wrestled with invisible attackers. The policeman now held his hands up, to obstruct the view. They could not take their eyes from her. His raised hands moved steadily back and forth, distracting, maddening, interrupting but not concealing the sight.

“Ma’am, the helicopter will not wait for you. Right now speed is very important. If you want to go on it, you’d better get ready.”

The rescue workers carried the stretcher to the back of the ambulance. Tess, still heaving, vanished within the double doors. One of the men came for Amanda. The girls were gone. The ambulance began to pull slowly away, wallowing along the verge until it reached the pavement, its grid of red taillights horribly irradiating the road behind it.

In the bedroom, Peter and Emma moved back and forth without speaking. The room looked plundered: bed unmade, closets gaping, clothes strewn about.

“What will I need? What will I need?” Emma asked suddenly. Her eyes were wild.

“When?” Peter asked stupidly.

“Where am I going?”

“Take everything,” Peter said. “You’re going straight to the hospital. Take a jacket, take your pocketbook. I’ll bring the car down on the first ferry.” It was unnatural, dressing so early in the morning.

Outside, the police car waited for them. They had no car, Peter realized, there was no car to bring on the ferry. Emma sat in front, with Garth, Peter in back. They drove along the dark silent roads. Outside, the trees began to declare themselves against the lightening sky. The car drew up at the tiny paved strip at the western end of the island. The three of them got out and stood waiting, their faces toward the mainland. The ambulance stood beside them, its red lights on, its doors shut.

They saw the helicopter before they heard it. It was Emma who saw it first, a bright steady star, moving toward them through the night sky. She lifted her hand, pointing, and then they all saw it, passing among the other stars, shouldering them out of its way. As it neared, they heard it, a mechanical stutter, louder and louder. By the time it landed, the roar was deafening.

The landing lights shone downward, illuminating the strip. There was the worn concrete runway, the long summer grass flattened by the wind from the circling rotors. As the helicopter descended it swayed, settling like a nesting bird, making a half circle as it sank down to earth. The rescue men sprang from the ambulance and opened the rear doors. By the time the helicopter had touched lightly onto the airstrip, the men had lifted two stretchers into the noise and glare. The forms on them were swathed and motionless.

Emma stepped forward, away from Peter. She followed the men carrying Tess. She climbed lightly into the open door of the helicopter after the stretchers were lifted on. Peter came with her halfway to the helicopter, then stood still, his hand lifted to wave. Emma did not look back at him until the very end, as the door slid across the open doorway. Her eyes met his without a sign of recognition.

The door snapped shut, and without a pause the helicopter began ponderously to rise from the airstrip, drawn upward by the thundering, flickering blades. Slowly it wheeled in midair, then, responding to some mysterious internal signal, set off diagonally, rising as it moved, the cabin leaning against the slanted course, as though it were drawn magically from above. It flew steadily into the lightening sky. Peter watched it until it faded from sight. He was alone.