Keep Quiet(9)

“He went along with that?” Pam recoiled, surprised. “I would think he’d be embarrassed. He’d been crying. What if he ran into someone he knew? Everybody knows who he is, from the team. You can’t miss him, he’s built like a lighthouse.”

“That’s what he said, but I insisted on it. He cleaned himself up in the car. I always have those Wet Wipes in the console, for when I eat in the car.” In truth, Jake was the one who cleaned up using the Wet Wipes. There had been blood on his face and hands. He’d driven away from a hit-and-run, thrown away the Wet Wipes and the marijuana in a Dumpster, and taught their son that dishonesty was the best policy. Jake didn’t know himself anymore. This wasn’t him.

“Why’d you want to go to the diner? You mean Mason’s?”

“Yes, Mason’s.” Jake realized he’d just trapped himself. He was a terrible liar. His heart beat wildly in his chest, as if it wanted to escape his very body.

“But you hate Mason’s. Every time I ask you to go, you say no.”

“I know, but you and Ryan love it, and I thought we could sort things out better there.”

“In public?” Pam didn’t look suspicious, merely critical. “Why didn’t you come home? I could’ve helped.”

Think! “I know, that’s the problem. If we came home, we would have looked to you to settle it, like Judge Mom. I didn’t want that. We had to do this on our own, just the two of us.”

“Really.” Pam nodded, with a new half smile. “So you went to Mason’s because I wasn’t there?”

“Honestly, yes. I have to find my own way with him. That’s the goal, right?” Jake felt he had turned a corner, inadvertently saying something that made complete sense, however false. Still it brought him no satisfaction or relief.

“Exactly.”

“You keep saying you can’t facilitate my relationship to him. The therapist said that too.”

“True.”

“So I tempted him with a cheeseburger, and we got over it.”

“Wow.” Pam brightened, genuinely happy, which only made Jake feel horrible.

“So it’s over. We solved it.”

“You resolved it.”

“Whatever, I’ll take it.” Jake managed a shaky smile, and Pam patted him on the back.

“You’re a good guy, Jake. That’s why I knew we’d be fine. Back when, you know.”

Jake’s throat caught. She meant when he’d lost his job and they had their rough patch. She’d dragged him into marriage counseling. It wasn’t his way, with his old-school, close-mouthed, working-class Scottish upbringing, from the other side of town. But like everything else he’d learned growing up, it had been 180 degrees wrong. Pam had taught him that, and now he was lying to her face.

“You’re reliable, and kind, and you try. You really do.” Pam smiled, sweetly. “You know what my mom always said about you.”

Jake couldn’t even fake a smile back. It was something they always said, a marital call-and-response, but the words soured on his tongue. “I’m Husband Material?”

“Ha! Don’t say it that way. Yes, you are.” Pam gave his back a final pat, like a period at the end of the sentence, then turned to go upstairs. “Okay, let’s go up. This week needs to end.”

“Right behind you.” Jake followed her from the kitchen, flicking off the lights. He should be relieved that he’d gotten away with lying to Pam, but it made him sick to his stomach.

He trudged upstairs behind Pam, leaning on the banister and hanging his head. He tried to unravel the night in his mind, to unspool the hours, to undo all the times it had gone wrong. He wished he had told Pam the truth. He wished he’d called the cops at the scene. He wished he hadn’t distracted Ryan while he was driving. He wished he hadn’t let Ryan drive in the first place. He wished he’d never even gone to pick Ryan up. Most of all, he wished that that poor woman was alive and well, back from her run, happy and at home, with her family.

But she wasn’t.

Jake had committed himself and his son to a course, and he had to see it through. Even though the notion filled him with dread.

And the deepest, deepest shame.





Chapter Four


Jake turned over, facing away from his sleeping wife, and opened his eyes. The bedroom was pitch dark because Pam liked to keep the blackout shades down, and it made the green digital numerals in his alarm clock glow even brighter. It was 2:45 A.M., and he’d been tossing and turning since he’d showered and gone to bed. He knew he would never fall asleep, replaying the night in his head, starting with him being parked outside the movie theater and ending with his avoiding his rearview mirror, so he couldn’t see the broken corpse of the woman vanish into blackness.

Jake tugged the covers up over his shoulder. In his mind, he went over everything he did and everything he said, then everything Ryan did and said, again and again, trying to see how it could have come out differently, or how he could’ve reached a different decision. But he kept coming out in the same horrendous place, reaching the same unthinkable conclusion.

Anguished, Jake felt like it was a no-win situation from the moment they hit the runner, or maybe from the moment he found out about the marijuana, or maybe from the moment he let Ryan drive. His guilt and remorse drove him to keep trying to parse his decisions and sent him into another spiral of what-if reasoning, what if I hadn’t gone to pick him up, what if I hadn’t let him drive, what if I had paid attention to the road, what if, what if, what if.