New Year Second Chance

I purse my lips.

“Your mother would want you to make it right,” Emily adds.

I glance at the family picture on the mantel, where my mother is wearing a light blue dress and a wide smile. She would want me to. And I do want to. I just… Everything just seems so complicated, and I’m so scared.

Emily takes my hands in hers. “Jenna, everything will be okay.”

Will it, though?

Just then, the house phone rings. My dad, who’s already in the kitchen, answers it. After a few seconds, he comes to the living room.

I stand up. “Who was it, Dad?”

I can tell whoever it was bothered him, and now I’m nervous.

“The cops,” he answers.

My eyes grow wide. “What do they want?”

“They want us to come down to the station because there’s somebody they think we should talk to,” my father explains. “They said it has something to do with the accident.”

~

The accident.

Right. It’s been almost a year since it happened.

I’ve tried not to think of it. I haven’t really had time. I’ve been so busy dealing with the aftermath that I’ve shoved aside what happened in a corner of my mind along with all the sadness and all the anger. Sometimes they escape, but I always try to stuff them back in.

They’re escaping now. As I drive my dad to the police station, I can feel it in the air, filling up the silence inside the car. It’s suffocating, so I try to stuff it back inside, but for some reason I can’t this time. Maybe because it’s someone else who caused the tear.

Somebody who has something to do with the accident. Who can it be? The one responsible? Why show up now? To explain what happened? To ask for forgiveness? Why now and not before?

It doesn’t matter anyway. No explanation can suffice. No amount of begging will grant him or her forgiveness. Because what’s done is done and the dead cannot be brought back to life.

We reach the police station in a few minutes. A cop who I recognize as Officer Miles is waiting just outside, smoking a cigarette. He extinguishes it beneath his shoe and greets my father and me after we get out of the car. He opens the door and leads us inside.

“Thank you for coming,” he says as we walk down the hall. “I know it’s a little late, but she’s traveled a long way. She wants to talk to you, and I think you want to hear what she has to say, too.”

She?

“Who is she?” my father asks.

I look at him because I didn’t expect him to ask. I didn’t think he’d say a word, in fact.

“Her name is Isabelle Crew,” Officer Miles answers. “She’s from Dunmore, Pennsylvania. I know you don’t know her and I know that you might not want to meet her, but just hear her out, okay?”

We stop outside the interrogation room. Inside, I see a woman in her fifties with shoulder-length hair that has already started to go grey. She’s wearing a black coat. Her thin lips are bright red and she keeps pursing them. Her fingers nervously fidget with the handle of her handbag as she waits.

I begin to fidget with my own hands. “Do we have to talk to her?”

Officer Miles looks at me. “Like I said, I think you’ll want to hear what she has to say.”

“With all due respect, Officer, I think…”

“Let’s talk to her,” my father says.

He seems to be talking more than usual tonight. It’s strange, but it makes me realize that maybe my dad has taken the accident harder than I have. He did lose as much as I did. Maybe more. Maybe he’s been hurting more than I thought he was and he wants to move on.

I draw a deep breath and nod. “Okay.”

Officer Miles nods in turn. “I’ll be right out here. If you need anything, just say the word.”

He opens the door. My father goes inside the room first. I follow. I look at the woman sitting behind the table, but when our eyes meet, I look away. Without a word, I sit down. I clasp my hands on my lap and keep my head lowered while I wait for either my father or the woman to speak.

“You are… the Holts?” the woman asks in a quavering voice.

My father doesn’t answer, so I do. “Yes.”

“I’m Isabelle Crew. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“Losses,” I correct her. “We lost my mother and my sister almost a year ago.”

“Right. I am so sorry.”

And I’m getting tired of hearing her apologize when I don’t know the reason why.

“Why?” I ask her. “What did you do?”

Isabelle draws a deep breath. Here we go.

“My husband, Mark, was not himself that day,” she starts. “He had just received terrible news. Cancer. Pancreatic. The same thing that killed his father. He left the house before I could talk to him. He took the car.”