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Adela bumped her shoulder to Jack. “She sounds like a great girl. Determined and not easily derailed from what she wants.”
“Yeah.” Jack’s sad smile broke her heart.
“I drove my sister that day to pick up some cherry ice cream before practice. Our parents drove in a separate car ahead of us to do the groceries like they always did on a Saturday morning.”
Jack traced his index finger on the sand, making an unreadable figure before wiping sand over it.
“I remember talking to Nicole about the latest Bruno Mars song, when suddenly our parents’ car banged against a truck riding parallel to their right. It took me a second to realize that my parent’s car had been hit first by another car who had driven straight into my father’s side of the car.”
She placed her hand on his knee, and he immediately linked their fingers. Adela felt the cold sweat in his trembling hand.
Jack dropped his chin while he rubbed his forehead. “I should have driven further away… but I wanted to help them…”
An unpleasant tingling traveled across the back of her neck. She rubbed his back as a sob escaped his lips. Tears filled her eyes as she felt his pain.
“What happened?”
“I parked the car to check on our parents and I locked the doors to my car so Nicole would be safe. She wanted to go out too, but I purposely kept her away since I figured the sight of our parents trapped in that car would be a nightmare.”
A few seconds filled with heavy silence passed before he continued. “When I got to my parents’ car, I immediately realized just how bad things were. Their car was scrunched between the truck and the car that hit them from the side. My parents were both dead upon impact. Something I’m still thankful for.”
She couldn’t imagine what he must have seen at the scene. She searched for words while processing his story.
“Nicole’s piercing screams still haunt me every night. I’ll never forget the fear in her eyes before…”
Adela’s splayed-out hand against her chest went up to cover her mouth.
“What happened to Nicole?” she whispered.
She watched Jack as he talked, like he saw everything happen all over again in slow motion. “Another driver spotted the accident too late and swerved to save himself. Nicole had been watching me through the back window and she saw the car coming straight at her. She couldn’t get out because I had locked her in.”
“Oh, no…,” she said.
“I ran without thinking, pulling out the key fob, but that swerving car hit me before it crashed into my car, where Nicole desperately tried to get out. She never stood a chance. All because of me: her own brother.”
She grabbed the back of Jack’s sobbing head, directing him against her chest. She let him freely cry as she stroked his hair.
“I’m so sorry, Jack.”
He pushed his tears away and made a move to leave her embrace, but she held on strong.
“Please, just a minute longer…” she said.
He did as she asked and leaned back in. She felt his shoulders slump before he let out an enormous sigh.
“I couldn’t live with myself for a long time…”
“It’s not your fault, Jack. You were just eighteen. Your parents had been in a lethal accident right before your eyes. Clearly, you weren’t thinking straight. It was all a terrible chain of devastatingly wrong turn of events.”
He pushed away from her, and this time she let him.
“That’s what Pat told me the night he took me in.”
“Pat is Zane’s father?”
Jack pushed tears away from under his eyes with the palm of his hands, his fingers pointing up to the sky. “Yeah. Pat Miller, a guy with his own heartbreaking story who already raised four young boys on his own.”
It was the first time Adela got a glimpse inside Zane’s life. The heavily tattooed construction worker with the cheeky grin was still a mystery to her.
