HIS MOTHER: But everything is different now. Isn’t it?
HIS FATHER: [No response.]
HIS MOTHER: Isn’t it?
HIS FATHER: Yes.
HIS MOTHER: Ernie is dead! Say it! I want to hear you say it, Jordan!
HIS FATHER: Ernie is dead.
Now, in Terminal E, Ava reappeared with her steaming latte and her sesame bagel. Jake checked with his father to see if Jordan found this behavior as remarkable as he did, but Jordan was staring into the middle distance, thinking about something, and Jake knew not to interrupt him. Used to be that he’d be thinking up headlines or lead-ins, or maybe trying to figure out how to justify raising ad rates or how to fire the sports writer, or where to find a new sports writer from among such a limited pool of candidates. Or he’d be pondering the death of newspapers in general. But what would he be thinking about now? He was thinking backward and not forward. Jake could tell by the glazed look in his eyes.
Ava blew across her latte and picked a tiny piece off her bagel and popped it into her mouth. Jordan had told Jake that Ava didn’t eat much because after Ernie died, it was one of the many things she had stopped taking pleasure in.
Now, however, she seemed to be savoring her snack. Sip of latte, bite of bagel. She even opened a tiny container of cream cheese and dragged the bagel through it.
Jake was as angry as he’d ever been in his life. His heart was a trash fire. We are leaving Nantucket because of you! he thought. He wanted to splash Ava’s latte in her face. He wanted to choke her with her bagel. But the moment passed, followed by an immense ocean of self-pity.
They were leaving Nantucket because of him.
DEMETER
They took her to the hospital even though there was nothing wrong with her. Nothing wrong with her except that she couldn’t stop shivering. Penny was dead. The car had gone up over the embankment at Cisco Beach, where the drop was… eight feet? ten feet? The car had seemed to fly at first, they had been going wicked fast, but Demeter was loving it, it was a carnival ride, scary and thrilling, right up until the very end, right up until she realized that Penny wasn’t slowing down, Penny was on some kind of rampage, and they were going to crash.
There were police at the hospital. Demeter was confused. Doctors, nurses, police-but where were her parents? Maybe they hadn’t come, though surely someone had called them. Demeter’s fake Louis Vuitton bag had been in the car, and her license was in her wallet, and-sickening thought-there was a nearly empty fifth of Jim Beam in the bag, too. Demeter had drunk some of it in her bedroom alone while the rest of those guys went to the graduation party at Patrick Loom’s house. Demeter hadn’t been invited to Patrick Loom’s party-or rather, she had been invited, but only through her parents, who got asked to everything because her father was a selectman. She hadn’t been invited in earnest, on her own merit. She never was.
So she had drunk some of the Jim Beam in her bedroom, and then she’d locked the door and climbed out her window. She’d scooted on her butt down the sloping roof to just above the garage, where she was able to leap to soft grass. Her parents would never have believed Demeter capable of doing this, because she was overweight and the least coordinated human being alive. She would never be able to execute her escape in reverse, because how would she climb the drainpipe to the roof? Someone could-Hobby could, Jake could, possibly even Penny could-but not Demeter. She was too heavy. She would rip the drainpipe right off the side of the house. She would wait until her parents were home from their evening out-they had no less than four graduation parties to attend-and when she was sure they were asleep, she would walk right back in the house, and pop the lock on her bedroom door with a pin.
Demeter was being largely ignored at the hospital. There was a flurry of urgent-sounding business swirling around her like a tornado. She heard the letters D.O.A., and she knew that that must be Penny. Penny had been dead on arrival. Demeter knew this, and she knew she was supposed to feel something, but she didn’t feel anything. The room was warm, but Demeter couldn’t stop shivering.
She heard the incoming helicopter. Medflight. Someone was being flown off-island. Someone was really hurt. Was it Penny? Penny was D.O.A. Did they fly dead people to Boston? Certainly not. So it must be someone else: Jake or Hobby. The Castles’ house was on the flight path of the air ambulance, and every time Demeter’s mother, Lynne, heard it incoming, she would genuflect and say, “God bless the patient. God bless the mother of the patient.” In this way, Demeter had learned that it was even worse to be the mother of the hurt person that it was to be the hurt person herself.
A nurse approached Demeter and lifted up her chin. Demeter was convulsing into the pillow she held against her chest.
“I think she’s in shock,” the nurse said aloud to herself.
Shock? Probably certainly correct. When the Jeep smashed into the sand, there had been an impact like the apocalypse, a world-ending smash. A horrible shattering noise, an acrid smell. And then the Jeep had tipped over, and Demeter had gotten that roller coaster feeling in her stomach. She had tucked her head to her chest. One hand had gripped the door handle, one hand had pressed against the seat in front of her, the seat where Jake was sitting. The Jeep tilted to the left, and Demeter might have crushed Hobby with her oppressive weight, but she was literally dangling from the harness that was her seat belt.
At that moment she had seen the unnatural angle of Penny’s head.
All of a sudden, everything that had happened in those seconds became unthinkable. Demeter’s mind shut off. Dark screen. Was this shock?
To the nurse, Demeter whispered, “Are my parents here?”
The nurse wasn’t familiar to Demeter. She said, “Yes. But I can’t let them see you just yet. We have to examine you. And you have to talk to the police.”
They had the bottle of Jim Beam, for sure.
She said, “Did someone get flown to Boston? Someone from the car?”
The nurse was taking her pulse. She looked levelly at Demeter. “Yes.”
“Who was it?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Is it bad?” Demeter asked.
“Yes,” the nurse said. “It’s bad.”
The nurse took her blood pressure, checked her eyes, her ears, her nose, her throat. Asked her to stand up, asked her to move her limbs, her digits. Asked her to say the alphabet backward, asked her her home address, her date of birth, and the date of Valentine’s Day.
“February fourteenth,” Demeter said. “Not a favorite.”
The nurse gave a dry laugh. “Does anything hurt?”
“Not really,” Demeter said, though there was something in her mind like a coin at the bottom of a well. Something shiny that she wanted to pick up but couldn’t quite grasp. She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate. Then she realized that the shiny thing was Penny, but Penny was D.O.A. Dead. Demeter leaned forward and vomited all over the floor.
The nurse jumped out of the way, but she wasn’t quite fast enough; she got splattered. Her turquoise scrubs, her nice white sneakers. Demeter vomited again. All that Jim Beam and the bag of cheese puffs that she’d eaten by big, guilty handfuls in her room, but not too guilty because cheese puffs were mostly air.
The nurse made a noise of disgust, which she then tried to cover up with gestures of concern and practical care. She reached for a shallow dish and called for someone to clean up Demeter’s mess.
The nurse asked, “Have you been drinking tonight?”
Demeter gagged and spit in the shallow bowl. Should she lie and say no, or should she tell the truth? The truth didn’t always help. This was a lesson Demeter had learned that very night: some truths should never see the light of day.
“Yes,” Demeter whispered.