I glance into the living room, our open concept creating a perfect flow from one room to the next. Wyatt is lying on our L-shaped sectional watching soccer on the flat-screen TV hanging above the fireplace. He lit the fire even though it’s April in California, like somehow the heat will insulate us against what’s happening around us. He’s focused on the game, oblivious to the mess his younger sister, Sutton, is making with her coloring books and crayons in the middle of the floor. She’s probably scribbling on the rug underneath the coffee table with the red one whenever she gets the chance. It’s her favorite thing to do when I’m not looking. I let out an exasperated sigh. She’s got more attitude than her two teenage brothers combined, and I can’t fight with her tonight.
Normally, Jacob would be in there with them, riveted to the game like Wyatt or sprawled out on the floor next to Sutton, but he’s not. His nurses should be preparing for shift change right about now, and I hope the new one remembers to put Aquaphor on his lips. They’re cracked and bleeding, creating angry sores around his breathing tube. A wave of sadness buckles my knees, and I lean against the kitchen counter for support until it passes.
Andrew is going to be furious when I tell him the Schultzes got a lawyer, even though he’s going to pretend like he’s not. He wanted to speak to a lawyer before we talked to anyone that night, but I wouldn’t let him. Sawyer’s death was a terrible accident. Just like what happened to Jacob. Our boys were screwing around. Being drunk and stupid with a gun. That’s all. Nobody was supposed to get hurt. It wouldn’t look like an accident if we started getting lawyers—only suspicious. I grab my phone to text Kendra. She’s been my first call since I was eight. My finger stops midway. None of this matters to her.
Her son is gone—ripped away from her in an instant. But all I could think about when the pair of uniformed officers showed up at our door in the middle of the night to tell us about the tragedy was my own son. Their words came in flits and phrases like liquid moving in and out of me while panic hammered in my chest.
An accident with the three boys.
The hospital.
One of the boys had died.
But not Jacob.
He was alive, and time moved in slow motion as we drove to the hospital. All I wanted to do was throw my arms around him and never let go. Andrew rambled on and on about how we needed Jacob to tell us exactly what had happened before talking to anyone else, but all that changed when we got to the hospital and saw him. The officers had told us he’d been shot in the head and was unresponsive, but that did nothing to prepare us for his condition.
He lay in a curtained cubicle underneath the harsh lights of the intensive care unit. Unfamiliar beeps and buzzes surrounded us as machines kept him alive. His entire head was wrapped in thick bandages, his eyes swollen shut like they had been the day he was born. Tubes moved in and out of his body. Blood filled one of the lines. The air was pregnant with stillness despite the frenetic activity going on around us.
Andrew came to a sudden stop behind me, unable to go any farther. A nurse punched numbers into one of the monitors hanging above Jacob’s hospital bed. I shuffled forward. “Can I touch him?” I asked in a voice that didn’t sound like mine.
“Of course.” She nodded, pointing to his left arm. “That one’s free of wires and gear.”
I moved to the left side of his bed. My hands shook as I stroked his arm, willing him to wake up in the same way that I used to will him to sleep when he was a baby. It’s been that way ever since. I hate leaving him, because what if he wakes up and I’m not there? Kids need their moms when they’re sick, so I have to be there when he opens his eyes, and he’s going to open his eyes. I don’t care what the doctors say or about any of their stupid statistics about where the bullet is lodged in his brain—Jacob is going to wake up. He’ll pull through this.
But Andrew is right. Wyatt and Sutton need me just as much as he does. I move my neck from side to side, trying to ease some of the tension pinching my shoulders, but it only makes it worse. Maybe the kids will fall asleep fast if I put on a movie. I’d better let Andrew know about the lawyer before joining them. He won’t like it if he hears the news from someone else before me. I grab my phone and quickly text him:
You’re not going to believe what’s happening now.
TWO
DANI
I inhale the lavender-scented candles and let the bubbles spread over me, doing my best to allow the familiar ritual to relax me, but it’s impossible. I’m tied in knots. It’s been that way since the knock on the door in the middle of the night. I can’t eat. I don’t sleep. I’m barely keeping it together in front of the kids. But that’s not even the worst part. It’s the guilt gnawing away at me, because no matter how awful I feel, it doesn’t compare to what Kendra’s going through.
Lindsey’s rage fills our newly remodeled master bathroom from over two miles away. Kendra is on the cul-de-sac behind us, but Lindsey refused to move when everyone else did. She said she didn’t need to trade in what she had for a better model to make it sound like it wasn’t about being cheap, but we know her better than that. Not like the distance matters tonight. She might as well be sitting on the toilet, glaring down at me in the tub.
What was I supposed to do? It’s not like I had a choice in the matter. Bryan didn’t even consult me. How many times have Lindsey and Kendra told me that I need to have a voice in my marriage? I’m as mad at him as she is with me. Couldn’t he at least have given me a say in something as important as this? He sprang it on me like it was nothing.
“Ted’s coming with us tomorrow,” he announced while we were finishing up the dinner dishes.
My back was to him while I scrubbed the last pot, so he couldn’t see my shocked expression, and I quickly rearranged my face before turning around. “Really?” I asked.
“He’s taking a red-eye out shortly after midnight, and his flight doesn’t get in until four thirty this morning. He’ll grab a few hours of sleep in one of the hotels by the airport and meet us down at the police station by eight.” He pointed to the stack of Tupperware lids in his other hand and asked, “Where should I put these?”
He acts like I’m so dumb. As if he could bypass the bomb he dropped in our kitchen by changing the subject. But I’m not nearly as stupid as he thinks. Or naive. Maybe I used to be, but not anymore.
He didn’t need to tell me which Ted. We only have one friend named Ted, and Bryan uses him for anything legal, as if he specialized in all areas of law rather than commercial property. He lives in Upper Manhattan in a bachelor’s loft that Bryan swoons over on Instagram whenever he posts a picture of it.
Being single and never married is a badge of honor he wears proudly, and he never misses an opportunity to drop it into conversation. None of his relationships have lasted longer than a year, but he thinks he can give Bryan marital advice. It makes me so angry, and I gave up pretending I liked him years ago. Eventually, he quit coming around, but it didn’t stop Bryan from finding a way to make it out there at least once a year. He comes home talking like he regrets being married and tied down with kids. It always takes him a couple of days to come back to reality.
At least Ted’s not staying here. He’s the last person I want in my space.