“Is everything okay?” she asked, the weight of caution in her tone.
I nodded. I don’t know why I do that on the phone. “No. Emma and Michael got into a car accident. They died.”
“What?” Mom asked, though I knew she’d heard me and wouldn’t make me tell her, again. “When did it happen?”
“They were on their way to the benefit.” This conversation was going about the same as all the other ones. Was it ghoulish of me to be relieved for the routine?
“Olivia wasn’t with them, was she?”
“No. She was at home. Is at home, actually. I don’t know if we should do something about that or…” I blew out a lon
g breath. If Mom had been here, maybe I would have hugged her and cried. But she wasn’t here, and there was really no reason to cry when someone else was going to need to cry to me later. My stamina was running out, and I couldn’t exhaust myself before we even got back to the apartment. “I just wanted to let you know. I don’t want to ruin your weekend. Stay there, but if something changes…”
“Honey, of course we’re not going to stay here!” Mom exclaimed. In the background, I heard Tony’s voice. “Look, we’ll head back first thing in the morning, okay? Or maybe the afternoon.”
“No, no, just stay there.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Call me in the morning, okay?”
“Sure,” she agreed with obvious reluctance. “Are you okay?”
I lowered my voice and looked nervously down the hall. “No. I don’t know how Neil is going to deal with any of this. He’s such a wreck.”
“I can only imagine.” The thing was, Mom really could imagine it. Emma and I were the same age. Neil losing his daughter was like Mom losing me. She was already so paranoid about everything she probably wouldn’t sleep at all tonight.
“I’ll call you in the morning, okay?” We said our I-love-yous and hung up. Then, there was nothing to do but wait.
A passing nurse gave me a sympathetic glance and headed into the door where Neil, Valerie, and Laurence were still with Emma. I followed her in, expecting her to tell us we all had to leave, that we’d been there too long. Instead, she told them that the funeral home had arrived.
Neil signed some paperwork to release Emma’s body. The nurse left, and Laurence put his hand on Valerie’s shoulder.
“They’re going to have to take her,” he said softly, rubbing his thumb across her arm.
Valerie nodded but broke down sobbing, again. She still held Emma’s hand; she hadn’t let go since we’d first come in.
I wished I could be as comforting to Neil as Laurence was to Valerie. I didn’t have whatever brain chemical causes a person to not be awkward in the face of tragedy. I just stood there like an idiot while Neil rose from his chair and leaned down to give Emma one last kiss on the cheek. He closed his eyes and whispered to her, something I couldn’t hear.
There had been times when I’d hated Valerie. I mean, really, really hated her. But I couldn’t imagine ever feeling that way toward her, ever again. Not after seeing her so wounded. Neil went to her side, and Laurence stepped back. He and I were in the same situation; we had to watch while our partner went through this loss on their own. The least we could do is let the two of them be there for each other.
Valerie lifted her head, tears coursing down her cheeks. She seemed to pull herself together a little, then her bottom lip trembled, and she wept, “Our baby.”
Neil went down on one knee to put his arm around her. “I know, Vee. I know.” He was surprisingly calm as he comforted her, and I realized that no matter how close Laurence was to Valerie, Neil was the only person in the room who could possibly guess at how fragile she could be. Though their romantic relationship had ended close to Emma’s birth, they’d raised their daughter together, and that bound them in their grief.
When we left, I was surprised again at how totally together Neil was. He shook Laurence’s hand, told him to take care of Valerie. He didn’t cry, or go to Emma’s side again. He was the definition of stoicism, somehow operating through his pain.
Until we got downstairs and through the emergency room doors. Then, he doubled over and vomited in the bushes.
A security guard came out the automatic sliding doors. “Do you need some help?”
“No, he’s…” What? Not fine. Literally sick from grief? “He’s fine. He’s really upset, but he’s not… He’s fine.”
The guard didn’t look like he believed me, and when he went back inside, still eyeing us, I reached for Neil’s arm. “Hey, we have to get out of here. That guy thinks you’re drunk or something, and I don’t think we should add a trip to the police station to our night, okay?”
Neil straightened. His face was pale and sweaty. “Under the circumstances, perhaps you should drive,” he said, reaching into his pocket for the key fob.
Yeah, I would just drive a ridiculously expensive supercar, then. I supposed we had a better chance of surviving the trip if the person driving wasn’t catatonic with grief.
God, I wish I hadn’t thought that.
The roads were still super slick, so I took it very, very easy. I hated driving in New York so much that I’d only done it twice before. It didn’t matter that it was the middle of the night. There was still traffic. Neil didn’t talk on the ride, except to tell me I’d left the turn indicator on, at one point. At least it was a short drive.