I step on the gas, getting closer to him again until our cars are near enough that I’m uncomfortable because of the icy roads. The voice comes back and this time I recognize it, “I miss your cock, Roddy.” A horn honks and I have to glance about to see if it’s near us, but it isn’t. It’s her side of the phone line. She must be driving in traffic too. “You sure you can’t get away this week? I can tell Brent I need to go to the mall—”
“Oh my God!” Shawnee screams. “Lilly, what is going on? It is that bitch, isn’t it?”
My insides are on fire. “Elaine?” I whisper.
“Lilly?” Elaine, Rod’s best friend’s wife, whispers back. The horror in her voice is obvious, despite the phone cutting out.
My foot comes off the pedal. Rod drives away, through the light that I am inching up to. The Bluetooth cuts out once more.
The bells in the church yard next to me ring so loud they seem like they’re inside my head.
Ding!
What just happened?
Ding!
What do I do?
Ding!
The scene around me is spinning and yet I swear time stands still.
Ding!
“Lil?” Shawnee says my name somewhere in the distance and her voice is cutting out.
Ding!
On the fifth bell, five o’clock on Christmas Eve, unbeknownst to me, my world splits in two.
Two of me.
Two paths.
Chapter 2
December 24
“Lil?” Shawnee calls to me, her voice clearer now.
I coast in the car until I’m barely moving toward the green light.
The ringing of the church bells is gone.
I shudder as my brain makes a thousand habitual excuses for why and how and why Rod would be talking to Elaine. But there is one explanation. And this is not the first time I’ve thought it. It’s the first time I’ve been able to prove it.
My car rolls to a stop.
Rod is having an affair.
Rod is actually having—
Bam!
Something jolts my head forward. I’m moving again. There’s blinding pain and darkness and metal crunching. Shawnee is screaming and I might be as well.
Searing agony rips through me. In the spinning and jostling I manage to whisper, “Shawnee.” But she’s lost in the chaos. All I hear now is ringing.
Needing to get out, I try to grab the door handle, but my left arm isn’t working. I reach across with my right hand and open it, falling out, still wearing my seat belt so it holds me sort of suspended. The movement makes the knife stabbing into my shoulder worsen. I’m screaming again as my fingers tremble, struggling to unclick the belt.
It’s tight and tangled and I can’t get free, but the pain is so bad I need to get it undone. When I do, I land on the concrete. It’s wet and cold and my fingers hurt. I crawl with one arm, dragging the other along the dirty street, squinting at the headlights glistening in the wetness. They’re blinding me. There’s a horn honking and Shawnee is screaming somewhere in the distance.
“Shawnee,” I whisper for her, “he’s cheating,” and fall facedown onto the street, my body tingling as everything goes dark.
There’s nothing, only silence as I come to, aware of the stillness that I am floating in for a moment before my memories stream back to me.
Rod and Elaine.
The car accident.
Sounds begin to flit in.
Voices I know.
“She’s sedated, they had to set her shoulder. She has a concussion and they said she will have whiplash.” Shawnee is speaking but I don’t think it’s to me. How much time has passed?
Am I dreaming?
“That bastard,” my older sister, Liz, whispers. “I am going to murder him.”
“You’re pregnant. Your options are poison or a gun with a good scope,” Shawnee says, and they cackle like wicked witches. “I know a guy. A hillbilly up in the sticks of Middle Musquodoboit. He can hook us up.”
I’m not dreaming.
This is real.
“Hold that thought. The moving truck rental is calling me back,” Liz growls followed by footsteps. I want to open my eyes but I can’t. Not yet.
Thumping pain pulsates through me.
It’s joined by nausea and heaviness.
More footsteps enter the room. “How is she?” my dad asks. His hand touches mine. I want to squeeze and grip for dear life, but my fingers won’t work.
“She’s okay. She had a dislocated shoulder. They sedated her so they could set it,” Shawnee answers softly, like it’s a secret.
“You were on the phone? You heard it—the whole accident and everything?”
“I was,” Shawnee says with a heavy sigh. I imagine she is shaking her head. “Her Bluetooth hasn’t been working all week. I guess it was still synced to Rod’s phone. So when she happened to pull in behind him, it picked up his conversation with his friend Brent’s wife, Elaine. It’s one of the couples they go on their holidays with every year. A guy Rod went to college with.”
“Jesus,” my father sounds disgusted, and I don’t know how to avoid getting some of that on me. “Well, that’s disappointing but not entirely surprising.” His words are devastating.
Not surprising?
“Nope,” Shawnee agrees with him. That is not surprising. She has hated Rod from the day we met. And now I see why. She saw something all along that I ignored. “Lilly swore she saw them kiss in Mexico once. Rod convinced her that she was drunk and played the victim game. Piece of shit.”
“Oh, poor Lilly,” Mom’s voice joins them. “How is she?” Her hands touch down, soft and cool on my cheeks as though she’s checking my temperature.
“She’ll be fine,” Shawnee answers.
“Tell her we were here, please. So she knows,” Mom requests.
“We can’t stay. Liz has us on moving duty,” Dad says.
“She’s talking to the truck rental now,” Shawnee adds.
“I should go give them my credit card number. Such a strange Christmas Eve,” Mom mutters and leaves.
“Liz is doing this tonight?” Shawnee asks. “On Christmas Eve?”
“Yeah,” Dad says. “She’s having them deliver the truck to the house. Brent’s called a friend who owns a furniture shop. They’re staying open late. I’m heading over there now with my truck to help her pick up some things. Can you call the minute Lil wakes?”
I have no idea what they’re talking about, and I’m becoming frustrated by my body’s lack of response.
“Of course.”
“Thanks, kid.”
Dad squeezes my hand once more before he walks away. His footsteps are the only sound for a minute until someone interrupts the silence.
“Is this Lilly Dallin’s room?” a man asks.
“It is,” Shawnee responds, sounding skeptical. “Who are you?”
“Brent, Brent Castor. My wife is Elaine,” he says. His voice cracks and he clears it like that was his intention all along and he wasn’t about to sob. “Is Lilly okay?”
“Oh God. Yeah, she’s going to be fine. Just banged up. How are you?” Shawnee asks.