Breaking Glass Read Online Free

in Riverton?”
    “His name is Ryan. Ryan Morgan. If your mother is from here, then she has to know the Morgans. They basically own this town.”
    Now
    Time in the hospital is formless. Shapeless. People come and go, but coherent thoughts are hard to come by. I drift slowly up from my dreams to find Dad by my bedside, his eyes even more shot through with red veins than before. I have a fleeting thought of how quiet the house must be with him rattling around alone without me to hassle.
    “Jeremy,” he says. “They’ve operated.”
    The words shock me off my cloud of cotton fuzz. “On me ?” Dad gives me his sorrowful one-cornered smile, as if there’s a tax on using both sides of his mouth. Or maybe they don’t work in tandem. I realize I can’t even remember what his two-cornered smile looks like, or if he’d ever had one.
    “On your leg, Jeremy. The break was very serious. Your tibia was fractured in three places. The doctors say you have compartment syndrome, which is when—”
    It’s a known fact that Dad reverts to jargon during times of stress. Usually it’s legal jargon, but medical terminology is more suited to the occasion. I cut him off with my own trademarked brand of issue avoidance. “Did you know that there are historic records of bones being set all the way back to 3000 BC?”
    “Jeremy.” He sighs. “This is serious. You’re going to be off your feet for a while. And—and they won’t know if the surgery took for about a month.”
    The last words sting like the peeled skin of a blister. “ Took ? What does that mean? My leg wasn’t cut off and reattached, was it?”
    Dad’s face is blotchy and purplish. The breath whistles out through his nose. “No. It’s all there.” He stands abruptly. “I’m going to send the surgeon in to speak to you. Maybe she can explain things better than I can.”
    “Dad, just a second. Was Ryan there when they loaded me into the ambulance? He says he was. And his car should have been there. He says it’s on the police report. Did you see the report?”
    He stares at me for a beat as if I’m speaking a different language. “Does that really matter right now, Jeremy? Look at you.”
    “It matters to me.”
    Dad heaves a sigh. “I saw the police report, Jeremy. The truck driver that hit you called the accident in and waited with you until the ambulance came. There won’t be any charges filed. There was no one else there. Ryan went for dinner with his parents after the show.”
    “But, Ryan was there with Susannah! I saw his car. I saw him. He says the police talked to him after the accident. Asked him if he’d seen it. Why would he lie?”
    My father’s face grows red. “Jeremy. Please. You were in a terrible accident. What you think you remember may not have been what actually happened. I’m an attorney, so I know—people have been convicted on the false memories of witnesses. Be careful about what you claim you saw, because your recollections may be faulty.”
    “I know what I saw. Ryan was there. We just talked about it. Ask him.”
    “Patrick Morgan made sure I got a copy of the report, and there’s absolutely no mention of Ryan being a witness at the accident scene.” Dad wipes his brow and continues in a low and soothing tone. “This will all blow over when Susannah turns up. So settle down. You have other, more important things to think about right now. Like your health. The doctor will be along in a minute.”
    Dad scoots out of the room, leaving my confused mind to make sense of the conflicting accounts. Why would Ryan say he was there if he wasn’t?
    Instead of the doctor, a very small person, her tiny face lost in a fury of dark hair, shuffles in hesitantly, like Dorothy approaching the Wizard. She’s wearing a white uniform and holding a package.
    “They said it was okay to come in. Is this a bad time?”
    I glance at my leg. It’s swathed in white gauze and suspended by an elaborate system of wires and pulleys the Brooklyn