The Wreck Read Online Free Page A

frown. Mary Ann, a petite blonde with the hazel eyes she
had passed to her sons, was first and foremost a mother. A full-time homemaker,
she had devoted her life to her boys and their friends. More than anyone else
touched by the tragedy, Brian worried about her. Well, he was desperately
worried about Carly, too, but had yet to fully deal with that in the midst of
all the other details and concerns of the past week.
    “An hour, maybe two,” he said in answer
to his mother’s question. “I’ll call you if I’m going to be any later.”
    He knew she wanted him to come home with
them to where their extended family waited to offer what comfort they could,
and it seemed to cost her something to nod her approval. “Give Carly our love.”
    “I will.” Brian wondered if it would
matter to her.
    They hugged him and left him standing at
the top of the hill as they made their way to where the exhausted funeral
director waited for them. Brian watched his father put an arm around his mother
to guide her down the slope. He hoped they would somehow find a way to survive
the crushing loss.
    After they had driven off in the limo,
Brian crouched down to run his fingers through the soft dirt that covered his
brother. “What’re we supposed to do without you?” he asked in a whisper as
grief gave way to the anger that had simmered just below the surface all week.
“What were you thinking driving like that? You didn’t even try to
slow down. They said there were no skid marks, that you just drove off the road
into that tree. You knew better, Sammy! How many times has Dad told us
we have to be better than everyone else because of who he is in this town? How
could you do this to him?” Brian’s throat closed, and tears filled eyes already
raw and gritty. That there could be any tears left astounded him. His voice was
once again a whisper when he added, “How could you do this to me ? How
could you leave me here all alone?”
    He bent his head and cried the same way
he had the night it happened, the same way he suspected he would cry for a long
time to come. Over the last week Brian had discovered there was no escape from
grief. If he was awake, it hung over every breath, every word, every corner of
his life. Sporadic sleep provided no reprieve, haunted as it was by vivid
dreams that forced him to relive the horror over and over again.
    Wiping his face, he stood and took a long
last look at his brother’s grave before he turned and forced himself to walk
away. He ambled down the hill and crossed the street to the sidewalk that
wrapped around the town common. A group of boys he knew from school were in a
circle playing hacky sack on the grass. They stopped their game to watch him
walk by. Brian acknowledged them with a brief nod but didn’t stop. He couldn’t
bear to listen to another awkward word of sympathy from peers so far out of
their league they said only the wrong things.
    As he left them to continue their game,
it occurred to Brian that he didn’t have any friends left. He had plenty of
acquaintances but no one he could call to hang out with. He’d always had Sam
and Toby, who’d been their friend since they were babies. Their mothers had
been close before Mrs. Garrett’s drinking had worsened right around the time
the boys started high school.
    They met Pete through Toby, and with the
three of them always around, Brian hadn’t felt the need for more close friends.
Once he started going out with Carly, he’d had even less of a need for others.
The eight of them hadn’t set out to distance themselves from the rest of the
kids, but they had nonetheless. Now Brian was left without a friend in the
world and a girlfriend who either couldn’t or wouldn’t share her grief with
him.
    Wanting to avoid the accident site, he
took the long way around downtown to Carly’s house on South Road. They’d once
counted the seven hundred and eighty steps between their houses.
    The tulip border Mrs. Holbrook lovingly
tended was in