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“Oh. Yeah, it's been a long... summer,” I finally conclude with a shrug.
Then I wince, dropping my voice to a whisper. “Is it obvious? That I’m spacing out?”
“No, I'm not trying to freak you out. It's the kind of thing the person who sits in the next cubicle notices.” She sets her coffee down on my desk before perching on the corner, like I invited her to or something. “What's up? Is everything okay?”
A lie is practically tumbling out of my mouth before I stop myself. Lies have become so much a part of my life recently I hardly have to think about them anymore. I don’t want to be a habitual liar. That’s not me. It also doesn’t mean I have to tell the whole truth, either. There’s an entire range of possibilities in between.
“My dad’s been upset lately,” I mutter softly enough that she has to lean in closer. It’s bad enough I’m about to do this without letting other people overhear. “The anniversary of my mom’s passing set him off, and I got to thinking just how little I truly know about her accident.”
“Oh, sweetie. I’m sorry.” She pats my shoulder a little awkwardly. I can’t blame her. I just dropped something heavier than the usual office gossip on her.
“When you walked over here, I was reflecting on that. On how I don’t know anything about how she died. I was eight, so it’s not like I was too little to understand what death meant. He must have deliberately kept things away from me, which has only made me more curious.” Biting my lip, I ask, “Is that morbid?”
“Hell, no!” she whispers back. “It’s natural. Normal. Your mom died, and you don’t know anything about it. That would drive me crazy.”
“I was wondering how to find out more information, although I seem to be drawing a blank.”
“Have you looked up her obituary? What about reports on the accident?” Her forehead creases. “Sorry. I probably should’ve asked what kind of accident it was?”
“Car.”
“They might have written about it in the paper—especially since your dad is a cop. Isn’t that what you told me before?”
“Yeah, that’s a good point.”
“Was it when there would’ve been articles published online? Like, not so long ago that there wouldn’t be websites?”
I snort, “How old do you think I am?”
She shakes her head, grinning, “Okay, right. Have you ever thought of Googling her name?”
Well, since she put it that way, I feel kinda dumb. “No, I haven’t. I’ll start there.”
“I’ll leave you to it—and, uh, pretend you aren’t doing this on company time.” The big wink that follows makes me laugh since she’s the queen of shoe shopping on her laptop when she should be working.
Once I’m alone again, I enter Jessica Cole into the search engine. Turns out there are lots of women with that name. After scrolling through the first results page, I add car accident into the search bar.
I definitely wasn’t prepared for this.
The first result comes with an image attached—a big, vibrant, full-color image of a mangled car. I let my eyes fall closed. I don’t want to look. I can’t look. Instantly I remember why I never Googled her name, even when the idea occurred. She was dead, and nothing would change that, so why would I force myself to look at something so awful? It was hard enough being without her. I didn’t need another reminder of her not being here.
Now, I’ll never forget the sight of the car with its tail end sticking out from where she ended up in the woods. I’ve imagined it so many times, yet nothing could have prepared me for the sight.
Slowly, I open my eyes again. It was raining that day, and the cops clustered near the car wore ponchos over their uniforms. From the angle the photo was taken, I can see the deployed airbag. The car door is wide open, so I imagine her body was already removed when she was shot.
There’s nothing left to do except click the link to the article from which the photo originated. It’s from the local paper published a day after the crash and doesn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. Mom was thirty when she died—the mother of a young girl and the wife of a detective. As I read on, I find out that they blamed the crash on the weather. It was raining.
The road could have been slippery, and I highly doubt people only just started driving like assholes the second a drop of precipitation fell from the sky. It’s possible somebody swerved, or she might have even swerved to avoid someone or an animal. Things like that occur all the time. I shudder to think of how often they do.
The front of the car was folded like an accordion when it hit that tree. I wonder how fast a person has to be going to crunch the front of a car that way.
