The front door slams as I enter my parents’ house.
“Jillian,” my mom calls from the kitchen, “dinner is almost ready.” She comes around the corner. “Your shoes...” Her expression falls. “What’s the matter?” she asks as she reaches out to me.
My shoes are plastered in dust and dirt from the easement. My eyes are moist and my cheeks covered in tears, yet I can’t pinpoint the emotions surging through me.
I lift the orange glass.
“What is that?” Mom asks.
“I believe that it’s part of a turn signal.”
“Well,” she says, leading me to the kitchen and opening the trash bin, “throw that away.”
“I need to know...”
“Jillian Thorne, that is enough. Throw that piece of trash away.”
My hands begin to quake. “Mom, did you hit a deer with Dad’s truck?”
She reaches for the orange casing, and instead of the trash, she tosses it in the sink. Before I can stop her, she turns on the water and hits the switch for the garbage disposal. The grinding glass screams as it dies its final death.
“Mom?”
When she turns my way, tears are falling from her blue eyes. Yet I know her emotion isn’t sadness. It’s pent-up frustration finally being released. “I told you to stop.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “I told you not to dig. I begged you. And look what happened? Look what happened to Julie and you...to Marty.”
I can’t stop asking questions.
This is why I came back.
To learn secrets, even those I don’t want to know.
“Mom, what happened with Dad’s truck?” I ask.
She turns her face from side to side. “No one else is home,” she says, “and we’ll never discuss this again.”
“Mom, did you hit a deer?”
“No.” She straightens her neck. “And you wouldn’t be asking if you believed I did.”
I lean forward as if her response is a punch in my gut, and my air is gone. Breathlessly, I whisper. “You...hit Craig.”
It isn’t a question, yet I wait for her answer.
“I didn’t set out to do it, Jillian. I didn’t.” She begins to pace the kitchen floor. “I was driving, and I’d just found out that he and Julie had beentogether.” She tightens her jaw. “After you...I swore...never again. And he...they...”
“Mom” —I reach for her shoulders— “what happened?”
“He was exercising—running. It was early. I took something to Ollie’s and dropped it off in Lawton before work. I was coming back to Blue Gil on County Road 62. The sun hadn’t risen, and the rain was falling...there was fog. You know how the windshield wipers are on that old truck...” She is rambling. “...he was there, running along the side of the road. I thought about you, how your whole life changed. The baby.” Her shoulders sag. “Mygrandchild—a boy I’ll never be able to hold.” She takes another breath. “I thought about Julie, and the revelation that he—that man—was the reason she and Austin broke up, that he was the reason she didn’t want to go away to college...Another life changed because of him.”
Mom takes a step away as anguish fills her blue eyes. “It’s my fault. All of it is my fault.”
“If it was an accident, you could tell Sheriff Manes.”
“I did. After I...after Craig fell...I stopped. He was lying there, and the rain was coming harder. I wasn’t sure if he was alive or dead. I pushed on him, and he rolled into the swale.” She’s pacing back and forth. “I panicked. I couldn’t pick him up. So, I left. As I started driving away...there was so much guilt. All of it. About him, about you and Julie with him. I decided that I couldn’t live with what I did, with any of it—I deserved to pay. When I got near the administration building, Joseph was at the high school directing traffic. Iwent to him. The rain was falling harder. In the middle of the street, I told him what happened.”
“What did he say?”
“He told me to calm down, to act normal. He said he’d go see if Craig was seriously hurt.”
