“The demons always come at night. I think you know that because I think you have demons too. Just a guess.”
After more rowing and more silence, I can see that Danny is not ready to tell me about his.
Unfortunately, there’s no booze in this boat, but I still ask, “Do you want to hear about mine?” It’s as though I’m challenging him in some way.
I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.
A rush of water brushes against the boat.
When he’s locked the paddles into place, Danny looks at me. “I do.”
“I’ve never wanted anyone to know who I am because, realistically, I’ve never been anyone to pay attention to. Because I am bitter, jaded, and not who I want to be. And because I’m someone who broke everything,”
“It’s some tile and the mantel—”
I interrupt him. “That’s not what I mean. But, yeah, I broke those too. Might as well fix some things. Or at least try,” I say as confidently as I can. “But I broke way more than that.”
Danny leans back. “Tell me.”
I shake my head, frightened that I’ve accidentally agreed to share this part of my story. “I feel like you’ll never see me the same way after this.”
“Maybe it won’t be in precisely the same way, but it will still be in a good way.” The damn dimples prevail. “Talk to me.”
My heart is pounding now, and I can feel my breathing pick up. I’m scared to say what I’m about to, but I can also feel that I need to purge. To finally say things out loud. “Only a few people know what happened the night that my father died. And no one knows the details.”
“Mike had a heart attack, right?” he prompts.
I pause before answering. “Yes. That’s true. But it’s more complicated than that.”
“Nothing’s simple,” Danny whispers. “Nothing is ever simple.”
“That night,” I start, “when I was eleven years old and happy and whole, I was asleep when a friend called me. She blew up my phone until I finally woke up. It didn’t matter how groggy and tired I was because when she told me that there was a midnight showing ofMonsters, Inc. in Burlington, I was alert as hell. This sounds silly now, but it was my favorite movie when I was growing up.
My hand falls into the water and swirls around a bit before I continue. “My parents weren’t big on screen time when I was little, but out of desperation to get me to sit the fuck still for a minute, my dad tried playing the DVD of that movie. Apparently, I was captivated from the first scene and watched it while barely blinking. Dad said it felt like the first moment that he and Mom were able to sit down since I’d started crawling. And then they played it again.”
My eyes start to burn, even as I laugh a bit, and I look at Danny.
“And so, a million years later, I woke up my dad and begged him to take me to that late-night showing. I was aching to see that movie on a big screen. And it was selfish and horrible of me. Of course, he didn’t hesitate to jump out of bed because he knew what this meant to me. To us, maybe. We rushed out of the house and into the car, and we had a great time at the movie. A crazy-huge tub of popcorn, a giant soda, laughing at Mike and Sulley and Boo. Calling out lines in real time. It was all damn perfect.”
“Until it wasn’t.” Danny knows how this story ends.
“Yes. Until it wasn’t.”
My hands grip the sides of the rowboat. Anger, pain, loss, and guilt wash over me with a tidal force.
This is the first time that I’ve spoken about that night out loud. The first time that I’ve relived it, aside from when the police interviewed me.
“But on the way home? He felt something and had to pull over. He told me that he was having chest pain, that he needed his pills. We were on the side of the road with him in agony and me searching desperately for the meds that he was asking for. He was supposed to have them in his glove compartment. He was supposed to have his pills everywhere, but he didn’t. Even then, he still tried to give me a bit of a smile, tried to make me not worry about him while I searched the car, and when I couldn’t find any pills, I finally thought to search his pockets for a cell phone. And when I found it, I couldn’t get help. There was no cell service. There was no fucking cell service, Danny, and I was so young, and my father was dying.”
“Jesus, Callie…”
“So, then I rushed out of the car and ran around with the phone because I was desperate to find a signal, and I was screaming and crying, doing anything that I could to save my father. But I was a kid. I was a goddamnkid.” I can hear my protests and remember how it felt to be so totally helpless and alone. “And when I got back to the car, he was dead. It didn’t matter how loudly I screamed or how hard I shook him or how many choking sobs I let erupt. He was still dead.”
Danny’s face says it all. He gets how intensely traumatizing this was. “There’s no way you could have done anything more.”
I continue, “It must have been two hours later, but finally, someone pulled over. Finally. After two horribly torturous hours. Do you know who?”
Danny shakes his head.
