All I hear is her saying I came home. She just called my house home, and something deep inside me grows wings and takes flight.
“I’m not being nice if it’s what I want to do,” I tell her. “I want you to see your brother. I’d want to see mine. It’s really that simple.”
“I’m sorry we’re such a trash fire,” she goes on. “I’ve got a junkie brother and a closeted brother and my parents don’t talk and my dad’s just a straight up asshole. Jesus. Meanwhile you’ve got this perfect beautiful family with an awesome niece and a cute nephew and four older brothers who are all functional adults and your cool mom is a fucking astronomer, I mean, come on.”
“Those assholes are not perfect,” I say, quietly, and Thalia lets out a single laugh.
“You know what I mean,” she says. “You’re so wholesome and here I come with all… this. I’m sorry.”
I start laughing softly at wholesome. I try not to, but I can’t help it.
“Okay, what?” she says.
“Levi’s a weirdo who talks to trees and has personal relationships with every squirrel in his yard,” I say. “Eli failed out of college and then disappeared for a while to backpack the world before he decided to become a chef. Daniel spent his teens and early twenties raising hell until he impregnated a monster of a woman who didn’t even tell him he had a kid, Seth’ll fuck anything with two legs and tits, and my cool mom’s been lying to everyone for years.”
Thalia’s quiet a moment.
“Oh,” she finally says.
I decide, right then, that I’m going to tell her the thing that I’ve never told anyone.
“And my father, the heroic policeman who has a road and a building named after him, was drunk when he died,” I say.
Thalia goes very, very still.
“In the car accident?” she asks, her voice small.
“He hit a tree doing seventy down a mountain road,” I say, heart still beating fast.
I can’t believe I told someone. It feels surreal, like maybe I could still reverse time and undo it.
“Oh, my God,” she whispers.
“The county coroner knew him,” I say, suddenly unsure how to proceed. “And she knew my mom, and she knew us, so when she found out that he had a blood alcohol level of point twelve she covered it up. My mom was the only person she told. I guess she thought she deserved to know the truth.”
I stare into the dark, remembering two things at once: the late-night knock on our door, watching from the stairs as my mom opened it, Levi’s hand on my shoulder, and then also years later, when I was the only one still living at home, overhearing my mom on the phone.
I remember the fight we got into, the fight we had for weeks afterward: me, a know-it-all, righteous teenager; my mom, steely and pragmatic. I wanted to tell my brothers, to tell the town newspaper, to tell everyone. I wanted to share my disgust and horror with the world, but she talked me out of it.
She said he’d already paid for what he did. That at least he hadn’t hurt anyone else, that we didn’t need to pay for it too. That he wasn’t a bad person — he wasn’t even much of a drinker — he was someone who made a bad decision and paid for it.
So I never told anyone, not even my brothers. Thalia was the first.
“Did he hurt anyone else?” she asks, softly, looking at me like she’s afraid of the answer, but I just shake my head.
“Even the tree lived,” I say. “It’s still there with a marker in front of it, though I never go that way unless I have to. It happened in January. Everyone blamed black ice, and no one but my mom and I know the truth, and we’ve both been lying about it for years.”
“I’m sorry,” she says.
I raise her hand to my lips, flip it over, kiss her on the palm.
“Everyone is fucked up somehow,” I say. “Don’t apologize.”
“You forgot to tell me how you’re fucked up,” she says. “Other than lying to your brothers, I guess.”
I start laughing again, despite everything. She pulls away and gives me a puzzled, amused look.
“Come on, Thalia,” I say, leaning forward and planting a kiss on her shoulder. “I slept with my student.”
“Right,” she says, and she’s laughing and wiping tears away all at once.
“Come on,” I tell her, holding out my hand. “Let’s go to Richmond.”Chapter FortyThaliaWhen we get to the hospital, Bastien and my father are both outside, standing next to a bench in front of a dilapidated flower bed. They’re not speaking, but when they see Caleb’s car pull into the parking lot, they both nod once in exactly the same way.
Chapman Memorial isn’t as nice as the last hospital Caleb drove me to. The outside is ugly, the gray concrete weathered and stained, the windows faded and ugly, a patchwork of slightly different colors. The first M is missing from the sign over the door that says Chapman Memorial. The garbage cans and ashtrays outside the door are overflowing.