Night Road

At 613 west, she paused a moment, then opened the door.

The room held two beds. The one by the window was unoccupied. In the other lay Lexi. Although her bed was angled up, she was asleep. Her pretty, heart-shaped face was bruised, her left eye had a bandage above it, probably from a laceration, and her left arm was in a cast. Beside her, Eva Lange sat in a plastic chair. The woman looked older than Jude remembered, and smaller. She had her hands clasped tightly in her lap.

Jude had heard so many stories about this woman over the years, how she’d picked up Lexi sight unseen and offered her a home. Eva had had hardly any money, and only a rented trailer and a secondhand car to her name, but she’d welcomed Lexi in. “Hello, Eva,” Jude said. “May I come in?”

Eva looked up. Her dark eyes swam with tears and the wrinkles on her cheeks were accordion-deep. “Sure. ”

“How is she?” Jude asked.

“How should I know? Getting a doctor to talk to you is like finding a winning lotto ticket. ”

“I’ll have Miles get you some information. It’s hard, though. We’re waiting to hear about … Mia, too. ” Jude looked at Eva, and though they had almost nothing in common, they had this moment, this mother’s worry strung between them.

“I don’t get it,” Eva said softly, her eyes moist. “She told me she was spending the night at your house. With Mia. ”

“Yes. That was the plan. ”

“But they weren’t home at 3:30?”

It occurred to Jude suddenly, sharply, that her children were responsible in this, that they’d driven … and that she had let them go. “They ignored their curfew. ”

“Oh. ”

Jude moved closer to the bed, stared down at this girl her son loved. It all seemed so unimportant now, the fight they’d had because of that love. The question of colleges. Jude would do things differently from now on. Honest, God. I’ll be better. Just make Mia and Zach and Lexi okay. “She’s like a part of our family. ”

“I know how much she loves you all. ”

“We love her, too. Well. I better go back now,” she said at last, stepping back. “We might get word on Mia. ”

“I’m praying for all of them,” Eva said.

Jude nodded, wishing she knew how to pray.

Twelve

“Jude, honey, there’s news. ”

Jude awoke with a start. She was slumped in a chair at Zach’s bedside. Somehow she’d managed to fall asleep. She blinked and rubbed her eyes. It made no sense that sunlight was streaming through the window. She could tell that her son was asleep by the even strains of his breathing.

Miles helped her to her feet and led her out into the hallway, where a man in blue scrubs stood waiting for them.

She clung to Miles’s hand.

“I’m Dr. Adams,” the surgeon said, pulling the multicolored cap off his head. He had a shock of gray white hair and a pleated, basset hound face. “I’m so sorry—”

Jude’s knees buckled. She held on to Miles’s strong arm, but suddenly he was shaking, too.

“Injuries too severe … no seatbelt … thrown from the car…” The surgeon kept talking, but Jude couldn’t hear him.

A hospital chaplain moved into her field of vision, dressed in black, a crow coming to pick at bones.

She heard someone screaming, and the sound blocked out everything. She pushed at the chaplain.

It was her. She was the one screaming no, crying.

When people tried to hold her—maybe Miles, maybe the chaplain, she didn’t know who was reaching for her—she pushed free and stumbled aside, crying out her daughter’s name.

She heard Miles behind her, firing questions at the surgeon, getting answers, something about cerebral blood flow and pentobarbital. When she heard him say brain death she threw up and sank to her knees in her own vomit.