I remember how startling the realization was—once I knew Harry might live, I knew what had to be done.
It wasn’t his car.
No one knew he was here.
I had to get him to the hospital, and I had to make sure no one found out he’d been driving. I couldn’t let him go to jail. What if they tried him for vehicular manslaughter?
I couldn’t let my daughter find out her father had been driving drunk and killed someone. Had killed his lover. Had killed the man who he said was showing him he could love again.
I enlisted Nick to help me get Harry into our car. I made him help me put the other man back into the totaled sedan, this time in the driver’s seat.
And then I quickly grabbed a scarf from my bag and wiped the steering wheel clean, wiped the blood, wiped the seat belt. I erased all traces of Harry.
And then we took Harry to the hospital.
There, bloodstained and crying, I called the police from a pay phone and reported the accident.
When I hung up the phone, I turned and saw Nick, sitting in the waiting room, blood on his chest, his arms, even some on his neck.
I walked over to him. He stood up.
“You should go home,” I said.
He nodded, still in shock.
“Can you get yourself home? Do you want me to call you a ride?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“I’ll call you a cab, then.” I grabbed my purse. I pulled out two twenties from my wallet. “This should be enough to get you there.”
“OK,” he said.
“You’re going to go home, and you’re going to forget everything that happened. Everything you saw.”
“What did we do?” he said. “How did we . . . How could we . . .”
“You’re going to call me,” I said. “I’ll get a room at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Call me there tomorrow. First thing in the morning. You’re not going to talk to anyone else between now and then. Do you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Not your mother or your friends or even the cabdriver. Do you have a girlfriend?”
He shook his head.
“A roommate?”
He nodded.
“You tell them that you found a man on the street and you brought him to the hospital, OK? That’s all you tell them, and you only tell them if they ask.”
“OK.”
He nodded. I called him a cab and waited with him until it arrived. I put him in the backseat.
“What are you going to do first thing tomorrow?” I asked him through the rolled-down window.
“I’m going to call you.”