Wrecked (7 page)

She didn’t know what to do or say to Eleanor. Ever since the accident, they’d behaved as if they were both polite strangers, even more distant than they’d been before. Miranda hadn’t talked to Eleanor about the accident. She’d tried, once, but Eleanor got an uncomfortable look on her face and left the room. The next morning, Eleanor casually mentioned that she’d thought it would be good if Miranda saw a psychiatrist a few times a week, to “process” the situation.

It had been the same story when Miranda’s parents had died. Eleanor hadn’t even told her what had happened, but had simply said that her parents wouldn’t be coming back, but that they loved her. Miranda had nodded, assuming they were just on a trip—they’d do that sometimes. During the funeral, under the watchful eye of Louisa, Miranda had had a tea party in the garden with her collection of teddy bears in the memorial garden at the Cavalry Church. When the service got out, all the mourners paused en route to their cars to hug Miranda or ruffle her hair, and Miranda had been confused that they
didn’t have presents for her—she’d assumed it was a birthday party. Later, Eleanor had taken her to a child psychiatrist, but all Miranda remembered doing at sessions were drawing pictures, playing with blocks, and hugging the extra-large stuffed polar bear in the corner of the office.

Now, Eleanor was still pretending everything was business as usual, as if willing it would somehow make it true. When Miranda had come home from the hospital, anti-slip rugs had been put down on all the marble hallways and the stack of college catalogues, correspondence, and SAT prep books that had been stored in the library had been boxed and put in Miranda’s closet. All the pictures of Miranda and Genevieve—Miranda and Genevieve at Gen’s Studio 54-themed sixteenth birthday, where Miranda had worn a sparkly romper that had belonged to her mother and Gen had worn a super short silver halter dress; Gen and Miranda, dressed respectively as the sea witch and a mermaid last year for Halloween, when they’d gone to a party at Fletch’s and realized as soon as they’d gotten there that they were the only two who’d bothered to dress up; Miranda and Gen, lying on the beach in string bikinis and oversized sunglasses, giving their cheesiest grins—had been cleared from Miranda’s room. As if Genevieve had never existed.

Miranda wrapped a towel around her body, slid on her flip-flops, and grabbed the crutches propped on a nearby chair. The crutches weren’t entirely necessary, but they definitely served as an emotional security blanket, especially in front of the Kings,
who resented her because she was alive and Fletch . . . was? wasn’t? Miranda didn’t know. Slowly, she made her way around the sandstone path to the front of the house.

There, Roger was waiting in the driver’s seat of the black BMW, while Eleanor sat in the back. Roger also did general repairs and maintenance on the sprawling house, and had also taught Miranda how to play soccer, the year she was five. When she was little, she once called him “daddy” by mistake. Eleanor had heard, and the next day, the impromptu soccer lessons had stopped. It was just another thing that Eleanor and Miranda never talked about, just like Miranda had never learned what had happened to her grandfather or had been allowed to look at any of Astrid’s old photos or schoolwork. In the Ashford household, dead meant dead, and talking or processing feelings was simply not done.

“Let’s go,” Eleanor directed Roger crisply. “There’s a five-twenty ferry.”

Roger nodded silently. Roger was always taciturn, weather-beaten, and morose, as if every day was a funeral. He wore a black knit cap year-round, despite the off-the-charts humidity during the summer. When Miranda was younger, she’d been half-convinced Roger was primarily on staff in order to spy on Miranda and Teddy, and ensure that they didn’t fall into the wrong crowd on Whym Island. In fact, she still wondered if that was the main reason why Eleanor kept him on staff.

Miranda gazed out the tinted windows at the setting sun.
The refraction of the light made it seem like the water was twinkling. Far off in the distance, the green-and-white ferry was slowly heading in toward the dock at the other end of the island.

Before, Eleanor would never have deigned to take the ferry. Roger would have taken the wheel on
Star Gazer
, and they’d have docked at their space on the mainland and taken a car on the other side. It was just one more reminder of how everything was different.

“Look at that,” Roger said, breaking the silence as he jerked his elbow toward the driver’s side window. Miranda looked where he was pointing. Far in the distance, at the dock was an enormous yacht, like some of the ones docked at the harbor in Charleston. It looked like a miniature cruise ship, with
Sephie
written on it in script and blue and green silk flags spiraling up the mast.

“Nice,” Miranda said, not knowing what else to say. Why should she care? The only way it affected her was that the more people lived on the island, the fewer people would know who she was. She scooted further down on the leather seat. Whym was such a small island that most year-rounders recognized each other, and Miranda didn’t want to see how the once friendly parishioners from the Cavalry Church, or from the Whym Flower Society, or from the Historical Preservation Board, were now shunning her and her grandmother. There had been no phone calls or sympathy cards or visits to the
house, not even from the Cavalry Church minister, in a month. The windshield had been cracked in the parking lot of the supermarket when Roger had run errands a few weeks ago. And the week after the accident, when Miranda had still been in the hospital, Eleanor had been turned away from Darcy’s funeral, even though she and Darcy’s grandmother had co-chaired the Memorial Day Flower Festival ten years in a row. Thinking of that scene—Eleanor, with her Sunday suit and hat, holding out a silver tray of egg-salad sandwiches, only to be sent away—made Miranda’s heart hurt. And yet Eleanor was still trying to get into the good graces of the families of the victims. Didn’t she realize the best thing they could do was to leave them alone?

“Nice?” Roger huffed. “Pretty fucking gaudy, if you ask me. Excuse my French. That’s no way to sail.”

“Now, Roger, hush,” Eleanor said firmly. “It is ridiculous, but who am I to judge? The longer I live here, the more this island surprises me. Maybe things do need to change,” Eleanor mused.

“Yes, ma’am,” Roger responded, and Miranda knew Eleanor wished she could gossip about this new person to Darcy’s grandmother. For the hundredth time that day, and probably the millionth time that month, Miranda wanted to apologize.

“Miranda, darling,” Eleanor said, changing the subject, “I spoke with Headmistress Wyar and she and I agree that Monday would work quite well for your return.”

“Monday?” Miranda repeated, dread forming in the pit of her stomach. She knew she’d have to go back to Calhoun eventually, but she assumed it would be in January, which sounded so distant and far off it was almost unreal. But Monday as in
tomorrow
?

“Yes. You seem to be doing well in physical therapy, and Dr. Dorn and Dr. Faville have given you the all clear. I think it would be good to get back into things. It can’t help to just sit around and ruminate. It’s depressing,” Eleanor pursed her lips, as if the word “depressing” was distasteful to even say.

Miranda stared at the floor as the car inched along the route to the ferry dock. Depressing? Not getting into your first choice college was depressing. Breaking up with your boyfriend was depressing. Having four friends die, a boyfriend in a coma, and three friends seriously injured because of an accident that was your fault was catastrophic.

“The accident couldn’t be helped. You couldn’t control that. What you can control is getting on with your life. Going back to school with your head held high is key to your recovery,” Eleanor said firmly.

“I know,” Miranda said. She leaned down, rooted inside her bag for her iPod, and closed her eyes. She didn’t open them when they got on the parking deck for the ferry, or when the ferry started pulling away, or when they reached the other side.

“She’ll be fine,” Miranda heard Eleanor murmur to Roger.

“Of course, ma’am,” Roger said, as if he’d agreed to pick up groceries or fix the door in the pool house.

Miranda only opened her eyes when she felt the car stop.

“I’m glad you were able to sleep,” Eleanor said, pulling a large wicker basket full of jams and flowers from the trunk and hanging it over her arm, as if she were heading off on a picnic, not a visit to a comatose patient.

Miranda trailed behind her into the now-familiar lobby of Westmoreland General, hating the scent of industrial-strength bleach and air freshener that accosted her. Miranda knew Eleanor insisted on accompanying Miranda—or, rather, forcing Miranda to accompany
her
—to the hospital to see Fletch more to keep up appearances than anything. It certainly wasn’t for Miranda’s benefit. They’d come every day for the past two weeks. Fletch was still in the same ICU unit he’d been in since the accident. He hadn’t gotten better. And even though the Kings weren’t saying it, Miranda knew he never would. People who got better had doctors and nurses checking on them several times an hour. People who got better didn’t have the same amount of machines surrounding them as they did hours before the accident. People who were getting better didn’t have daily closed-door meetings with social workers, who were most likely asking the Kings when they were ready to say good-bye to Fletch. Miranda had seen enough crappy television medical dramas to know this. Still, sometimes she just hoped that
maybe
a miracle could happen.

When Miranda had been in the hospital after the accident, she’d been on the orthopedic floor, where she’d shared a room with a college cheerleader who had a broken ankle and hosted what had sounded like—in Miranda’s hazy, painkiller-induced fog—a sorority social in the room. In contrast, the ICU unit was quiet, except for the hiss of ventilators and the hushed tones of family members.

Miranda closed her eyes and crossed her fingers as they stepped off the elevator. It was a habit before she did anything, whether it was begin a soccer game or take a chemistry quiz. Now, it was a gesture to hope Fletch’s parents weren’t there, and that they were taking a nap at the mainland hotel they were staying at or grabbing a cup of coffee at the hospital coffee shop or even having a closed-door meeting with his doctors, anything so she could actually say what she wanted to Fletch—that she was sorry, that she wished she’d said
I love you
when it mattered, and that she’d do anything for him to get better.

“Miranda.”

Miranda whirled around as Fletch’s mother, Lily, emerged from the tiny kitchen next to the nurses’ station clutching a Styrofoam coffee cup. Tears were drying on her high cheekbones and instead of wearing her usual pastel sweater set or flowered Tory Burch dress, she was wearing a pair of oversize blue doctor’s scrubs. Her blonde hair was pulled in a low pony-tail and she wasn’t wearing any makeup. Except for the dark circles under her eyes, she looked almost childlike.

“Hi,” Miranda said, shifting nervously from foot to foot. Before the accident, Lily had always been friendly to her, constantly asking Miranda to dinner with the family and inviting her for lunch downtown for girl talk. She was a little flighty, but mostly fine, to talk to. Now, Mrs. King was only icy.

“How is Fletch?” Miranda asked in a small voice. As if the answer would be different than what it had been the last two weeks.

“Hello, Lily,” Eleanor said, stepping in front of Miranda to offer the basket to Mrs. King. “We’ve been praying for Fletch. And of course, if there’s anything we could do . . .”

“There’s nothing you can do,” Lily said coldly. Miranda stared at the dirty linoleum. The unspoken rest of the sentence was clear . . .
Because you’ve done enough.

The first time Eleanor and Miranda had visited was right before Miranda had been discharged from the hospital. She’d been on a potent combination of pills for pain, sleeping, and anxiety, and had felt like she was in a dream. She knew she was supposed to be upset—no,
devastated—
but she couldn’t cry. Whenever the doctors, or the police, or her grandmother had asked her if she remembered the accident, it had felt like she was remembering a scene from a movie. It hadn’t felt real. And she couldn’t make sense of it. All the questions the police raised were the same that tossed in her own mind: Why
had
she been the only survivor who’d ended up on shore? How had she gotten disentangled from the cables? And why hadn’t anyone else
followed her lead to safety?
I don’t know!
She wanted to scream.

“He’s in his room, if you’d like to stop in,” Lily said stiffly. As if Fletch
could
be anywhere else. Miranda felt like she was an actress in a movie, unsure of what her next line was. On her first visit, she’d made the mistake of telling Lily how Fletch had saved her, how the last thing she remembered seeing was Fletch helping the girls get off the boat and into the water. She’d thought Lily would have liked hearing that, but later she realized that of course, that was the last thing Mrs. King wanted to hear. Because if Fletch hadn’t stayed on the boat, he wouldn’t have inhaled so much smoke. He wouldn’t have passed out in the water. He wouldn’t be brain dead. Which of course, was what he was, even if Mrs. King refused to use that term.

“Of course,” Eleanor said somberly as she patted Lily’s shoulder. Lily recoiled as if she’d been slapped and Miranda felt a sliver of rage slice through her stomach. Didn’t Eleanor realize they weren’t wanted here?