“My parents should be asleep,” she said. “But if you're really quiet, you could come in. They'll hear the door and think it's just me. They won't get up.”
“I can be quiet,” Ben said.
And he had been, much quieter than Larissa, in fact, whose mouth he'd had to cover not once, but twice while he whispered shhhh, shhhh as they were doing it right on her bedroom floor. It was a turn-on, exciting her so much she could forget herself that way, so much she would cry out not twenty feet from where her parents were sleeping, oblivious to it all.
Afterward, driving home, he couldn't stop smiling. She'd been good, she ‘d been so into it. It was like Bean hadn't been satisfying her or something. He half wondered whether she had cried out because she wanted him to cover her mouth, because she liked it, and even though he'd already come twice the thought gave him a hard-on. Man, there couldn't have been a more perfect end to a more perfect day.
When he pulled into the driveway, the first thing he noticed was that a lot of lights were on in the house. He glanced at the car's digital clock. It was nearly two in the morning. It didn't make sense.
Then he noticed his dad's car was gone. Uh-oh. Had Katie not made it home okay? Did his dad have to go get her? If so, Ben was probably going to be in deep shit.
He went inside and walked quietly up the stairs. The bedroom doors were all open. The lights were on in Alex's and his parents’ bedrooms.
“Hey, what's everyone doing up?” he called out.
There was no answer. He poked his head in Alex's room. No one was there. The bedcovers were kicked off, though. Alex was always anal about making his bed just right, so he must have been sleeping in it tonight until…
“Is anyone here?” Ben called out again, now walking over to his parents’ bedroom. It was in the same condition as Alex's, the lights on, the covers off.
“What the hell?” he said aloud, nervous now and telling himself there was no reason to be.
He walked down the hall to Katie's bedroom and flipped on the light. The bed was made.
Shit, Katie had never made it home.
No, he didn't know that, not for sure. All he knew for sure was that she hadn't gotten in her bed before…
Before what? Before they all piled into his dad's car and hauled ass out of there in the middle of the night?
But if Katie had called for a lift, why would they all have gone?
Suddenly he felt sure something was seriously wrong.
He walked down to the kitchen. No note, no nothing. Everything neat, the dishes all put away. Somehow the neatness, the order, was unnerving. It sharpened the incongruity of everyone's absence.
“Fuck,” he said aloud. He had no idea what to do.
The phone rang. He spun and stared at it for a moment. He realized he was afraid to answer.
It rang again.
He hesitated, sensing he was trapped in some precarious in-between place, his life and its safe assumptions on one side, the end of it all on the other. On the other side of that phone.
It rang a third time.
Come on, just pick up the goddamned phone.
But he didn't.
It rang again.
He thought, What if they hang up?
His paralysis broke. He strode over and snatched up the receiver. “Hello,” he said, his mouth dry.
“Ben.” It was his dad. “Thank God. You need to come to Stanford hospital emergency room right away. Katie was in an accident.”
A chill rushed through him. He tried to swallow but couldn't. “What? What happened?”
“Just come right away. Understand?”
“Okay. I'll leave right now.”
“Drive carefully,” his father said, and somehow, behind the two simple words, Ben sensed a bitter rebuke.
The rest of the night was a blur; the days after, a nightmare. His parents outright blamed him. Alex's silent, accusatory stare was worse.
Worst of all was the morning of the funeral. He was already crushed with grief and guilt and remorse. He was sitting at the desk in his room, staring at the wall, replaying the evening over and over again, imagining the thousand different things that could have happened, the thousand different things he could have, should have done.
There was a knock on his door. “Yeah,” he called out listlessly.
It was his parents. It had been, what, forty-eight hours since Katie had died? They looked like they hadn't slept a minute since. Like something inside them had… broken.
They sat on the edge of the bed across from him. “Ben,” his dad said. “What we said the other night… it wasn't right. It wasn't… correct.”
Ben shook his head, afraid to speak.
“We're… devastated, honey, you know that,” his mom said. She started to cry but managed to keep going. “When something like this happens, people sometimes blame others, even the people closest to them. Because if you blame someone, it's easier to believe someone had some control over what happened, that it could have been prevented.” A quaver had entered her voice and she stopped, took a deep breath.
“But that's not right,” she went on, her voice getting higher now. “Not everything can be controlled. Accidents… sometimes they just happen, baby, and it's not your fault.”
She was crying harder now, her eyes pleading with him through her tears.
“If it was anyone's fault, it was mine,” his dad said. “I wasn't clear when I told you about coming home. You didn't do anything wrong, Ben, and we were wrong to suggest that you did.”
Ben looked at them. He understood what they were doing. He could even imagine the conversation that had led to it: We have to protect him from the guilt. We can't saddle him with this, no matter how true it is. He's too young.
The problem was, the way they were now trying to protect him made the guilt a hundred times worse. Their previous recriminations had made him angry, and the anger was at least partly protective. Now, with the recriminations lifted, his anger dissipating, the truth shone through with a new and awful clarity.
Because deep down, he'd known what his father really wanted. The old man didn't trust Wally and wanted to be sure that Ben-Ben personally-would get Katie home safely. Maybe he didn't spell it out to the last detail because he didn't want to seem overbearing, overprotective, but that's where he was coming from. Ben had just been looking for a loophole, that's all, because it was his night and he was the conquering hero and Larissa Lee wanted to fuck him. He'd known, but pretended not to.
Ben wanted to tell them no, it wasn't their fault, his dad had been clear, Ben had understood fine but hadn't wanted to listen. Admitting it, owning up to it, it was the right thing to do, no matter how hard it was.
He tried to say something, but… he didn't. Maybe he was afraid to speak, afraid that if he did, he would lose control. Or that he'd say something wrong and make it worse. So he said nothing instead. His parents kept crying. Eventually his mom got up and left, and his dad followed her.
Part of him understood they needed to have the rest of the conversation now, that otherwise it wouldn't happen ever. But another part of him whispered that his parents were already bearing as much as they could; he needed to leave them alone for a while. There would be other opportunities for him to admit his guilt, sometime in the future when it could be discussed to the tune of a little less confusion and agony.
And he'd listened to that second voice. Just as he'd listened when Katie had told him, No, he's cool. He'd listened to what he'd wanted to hear.
Jesus, two turning points in as many days. And he'd gone the wrong way at both.