“I should drive,” George said as they approached Graham’s car. Graham wanted to chuckle, but his father was serious. The elder Chamberlain prided himself on being the best driver of the household.
“Not a chance.” Graham held the passenger door for his mother and waited for her to be safely inside before he shut it. He ran around to the driver’s side, got in, and reminded his dad to put his seat belt on.
Graham drove out of town, north toward the highway. It would take them approximately three and a half hours to get to Port A if they caught the ferry at the right time. He couldn’t be sure the ferry ran today and couldn’t very well ask his parents to look the schedule up on his phone. He took his phone out of his pocket and asked the artificial intelligence to call Bowie.
“Hey, what’s up? Are you on your way over?”
“Can you look up the Port Townsend ferry schedule to Coupeville?” he asked, avoiding his friend’s question.
“Everything okay?”
“I don’t know. Grady is in Port A General. My parents and I are heading there now.”
“Holy shit, Graham. What happened?”
“Not sure—they won’t tell us over the phone.”
Bowie didn’t speak for a few moments, and when he came back on the line, he gave Graham the schedule. The ferry ran on a limited schedule because of the holiday, and Graham would have to time his arrival to make it across to Coupeville.
Graham thanked Bowie, hung up, and pressed the gas pedal a bit more. His mother wouldn’t be fond of him speeding, but he needed to hurry. In hindsight, he should’ve gone the other direction, but he’d thought he would save time by heading north.
During the drive and ferry ride, no one spoke. Graham held his mother’s hand most of the trip, and when they were on the boat, his father refused to get out of the car. Graham needed fresh air. He needed to think. He went to the top deck, where very few people were, and stood against the railing. The harsh wind beat against his face. If he wasn’t already in pain from the ache he felt, the wind might’ve hurt. He tried to think about anything other than Grady’s cold dead body lying on a table. Since the fateful accident, Graham’s outlook on life was far from positive. He saw the bad before the good. He expected nothing to go his way, and when it did, he looked for the underlying message. Bad luck and shitty outcomes followed him like the plague, especially when his brother was involved.
When the port came into view, Graham headed back to his car. The windows had fogged over, which led him to believe his parents had argued while he was gone. Growing up, his father never uttered a nasty word toward his mother. That all changed after the accident.
At first, Johanna catered to Grady. She coddled him. She made his breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Did his laundry, cleaned up his messes, and sat outside the bathroom door while her son threw up the copious amounts of alcohol he had consumed hours before. She spent hours on the phone with Graham, crying, asking her son repeatedly why this happened to their family. They were good people, never caused harm to others. And yet, everything fell apart around them. Graham had never had an answer, and he never would.
George, on the other hand, spent hours at the bar with his son. When he wasn’t working, he sat on the stool next to Grady. In George’s mind, he helped Grady cope the best way he knew how and refused to believe he enabled his son in any way. He was his friend. They were best buds. A voice of reason wasn’t what Grady needed at that time. He had lost his best friend in a tragic and traumatic accident, barely surviving himself. Grady needed support, and George provided it, pint after pint.
The Chamberlains each saw their son in a vastly different light. Johanna wanted her son in rehab. George denied Grady had a problem.
Back on the road, Johanna tried to make small talk. Graham would answer and offer an opinion, but George stayed silent. Every so often, Graham would look at his father in the rearview mirror and try to figure out what the man thought. Was he scared? Was reality finally setting in? Graham wanted to know, but there was no way George would express his feelings. He wasn’t that sort of man.
An hour later, Graham pulled into the parking lot of Port Angeles General. The hospital was new and looked practically like a shopping center. It wasn’t one of those monstrosities you would find in a big city but a two-floor, well-designed building with a view of the mountains. Regardless of its facade, it was a hospital, and they had been summoned there because something happened to Grady.