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The blood had ruined her hair.
His stomach heaved, and Tony swallowed convulsively. He kept breathing. It was always like this.
“They charged Patrick with aggravated vehicular homicide, which meant he was drunk when he hit her, but they dropped it dow
n to negligent because his blood alcohol wasn’t high enough to make the charge stick. I wouldn’t have let him drive drunk. I swear to God, I was never that stupid. But he was tired, and that was because of me. We’d only slept a couple hours. He had a DUI on his record, so he did six months in jail.”
She sniffed.
“Don’t cry. It’s done. It’s been done for a long time. Crying won’t fix it.”
“How do you … how do you even keep going?” The horror in her voice made him wince. “Her mother. Your poor brother. He must be—”
“He had a rough time. He’s doing better now.”
She moved to his side and kneeled, and he could feel her right beside him, looking at his profile. Searching his face for something. “What about you?”
Tony turned his head away. He hated this part. The sympathy. The bottomless fucking sympathy. So much harder to take than hatred or cold condemnation.
“It was worse for Patrick. A thousand times worse.”
“But you think it was your fault.”
“It wasn’t me behind the wheel, but I was responsible. Her mother was responsible. All of us were out there, being assholes, not taking good enough care of Nicole, and it could’ve been me behind the wheel just as easy as Patrick.”
His hands lay open on his knees, his fingers curling into fists and uncurling again, because he wanted to grab onto her, but he couldn’t even look at her.
She couldn’t fix it. Nobody could.
“I didn’t pay enough attention,” he said. “I always had a problem with that—getting distracted too easy, not following through on school and other stuff. My dad gave me hell for it. Whenever he had to clean up something I’d made a mess of, he’d say, ‘It’s gonna get you into big trouble one of these days, Anthony.’ And he was right.”
She sank down to her haunches, and he felt the brush of her fingers over his cheek before he understood she was going to touch his face.
If he’d seen it coming, he wouldn’t have let her. She’d snuck up on him.
She kissed his temple. “When did it happen?”
“Five years ago. Last month, she would have been seven.”
“And your dad?”
“Three years.”
“You still drink?”
“Never.”
“You raise hell? Go out to bars, pick up women?”
“No.”
“So how long before you’re done with your penance? When do you get forgiven?”
He made his fists flatten out on his knees. Not her fault that she didn’t understand. She didn’t know.
“Not yet.”
She wrapped her arms around him and rubbed her wet cheek against his neck. “I forgive you, Tony.”
