The Wreck Read online

  They were about a hundred yards from Tucker Road when the sickening screech of metal colliding with something hard and unyielding sliced through the peaceful night.

  “What was that?” Carly asked as they broke into a run.

  “Do you smell smoke?” he asked a few minutes later, panting from exertion.

  “Yeah.”

  Running as fast as they dared on the dark path, Carly and Brian emerged from the thicket and stopped short at the sight of an inferno. A car had hit one of the big oaks that lined the road and was fully engulfed in flames.

  “Oh my God,” he gasped.

  At the same moment the stench of burning flesh reached the side of the road where they looked on in horror, it registered with Brian that the car was his own station wagon. “No!” he shrieked, bending at the waist as if he had been punched. “Sammy! Noooooooooo!”

  In an effort to break free of him, Carly tugged at the grip he had on her hand.

  “No, Carly!” He lifted her off her feet to keep her from bolting across the street.

  She struggled to break free. “We can’t just stand here!” she shrieked. “We have to do something!”

  Tears coursed down his cheeks as he turned her face into his heaving chest. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  The initial blast of flame began to die down, making ghastly silhouettes of the bodies burning inside the car.

  “Don’t look,” Brian said, choked by sobs and acrid smoke. “Please don’t look.”

  Despite his pleas, Carly turned her face toward the heat and stiffened when realization set in. Her screams shattered the night.

  Standing by the side of the road, across from the smoldering remains of the car, his brother, and five of his best friends, Brian Westbury felt the fragile hold he had on his childhood give way to the stark, agonizing reality of adulthood. While the paramedics tended to Carly, who had screamed herself hoarse, the first cop on the scene focused on him.

  “Do you know where your father is tonight?” asked Lieutenant Matt Collins, a man Brian knew well. Brian’s father was the chief of police, and his officers would need his guidance as the full magnitude of the tragedy began to seep through the smoke. That the chief had lost the younger of his two sons maybe hadn’t occurred to Matt yet.

  Brian ran a trembling hand over his face. “They went to my aunt’s in Cedarville.”

  “Do you know the number there?”

  Brian’s voice broke as he rattled off the number. “You aren’t going to tell him it’s Sam over the phone, are you?”

  Lieutenant Collins put his arm around Brian’s shoulders. “No, son.” He barked out orders to the cops who had arrived after him, sending one of them to call in the chief’s contact number to the dispatcher. When Brian’s knees buckled, the lieutenant eased him to the ground and sat next to him.

  “Is Carly all right?” Brian asked. He couldn’t see her with the paramedics hovering over her, but her agonized shrieks continued unabated.

  “They’re taking good care of her. Don’t worry.” With his hand on Brian’s shoulder, the lieutenant’s voice was gentle. “I know this is awful for you, Brian, but can you tell me who was in the car with Sam?”

  Brian took a deep breath and recited the names of five people who meant more to him than life itself. That they were all gone was simply unimaginable. The staggering weight of the tragedy settled over him, and sobs shook his body. Lieutenant Collins put his arms around Brian and held him until he had collected himself.

  “I can ask the paramedics to give you something if you think you need it,” the lieutenant offered. “There’s no shame in taking the edge off after what you’ve just witnessed.”

  Brian shook his head and wiped his face. “I need to be clearheaded for my mother and Carly.”

  “Can you tell me what you saw?”

  While they waited for the medical examiner to arrive, the other cops secured a perimeter around the wreck and held back the small group of onlookers that had gathered.

  “We didn’t see it happen. Carly and I were walking on the path from the lake when we heard the car hit the tree.”

  “What did it sound like?”

  “A huge boom followed by the crunch of metal.” If he lived forever, Brian would never forget that sound.

  “Did it sound like an explosion?”

  “Not really, but I can’t be sure. It happened so fast.” Brian swiped at the tears on his face and struggled to continue. “We ran as fast as we could, but we were still quite a ways from the road. By the time we got here, the car was burning.” He began to cry again at the memory of the burning bodies and Carly’s horrified screams. With a certainty he couldn’t explain amid the thick fog of shock and disbelief, he knew he would also never forget the sight of the people he loved burning in the car, the sound of Carly’s screams, or the horrific smell of death.

  “You know I have to ask if Sam was drinking tonight,” Lieutenant Collins said tentatively.

  Brian shook his head. “We were together earlier at Toby’s house, but there was no booze. They went out for pizza while Carly and I took a walk. You can check at Ricardo’s to see what they had, but they don’t serve us there. They know we’re not legal.”

  “I appreciate you keeping it together, Brian. Your dad would be proud of you. I’m going to have someone take you home now to wait for your parents.”

  “I want to stay with Carly.”

  “Let me see what’s going on with her. Stay here.”

  Brian rested his head on his knees and imagined his parents receiving the call every parent dreads. New tears filled his eyes at the thought of his mother hearing Sam was dead, that he had burned to death along with five other kids who had been in and out of their house for so many years his parents considered them their own.

  Lieutenant Collins returned a few minutes later. “Carly is understandably in shock. They’ve sedated her and are taking her in as a precaution, but they don’t think there’s anything to worry about.”

  Brian stood. “I want to go with her.”

  “Her parents are on their way to the hospital.” The lieutenant rested his hand on Brian’s shoulder. “I’m not going to tell you what to do, but I think where you need to be right now is at home waiting for your parents. They’re going to need you, Brian.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Brian knew the lieutenant was right, but with all his heart he wanted to stay with Carly. “Can I see her for a minute?”

  “Of course.” He led Brian over to where the paramedics had loaded her onto a gurney.

  Brian leaned down to kiss her cheek and was startled by the vacant, empty look in her normally vibrant brown eyes. “Carly, it’s Brian. I’m here.” He took her cold hand and held it tightly. As tears blinded him, he wanted to assure her that she would be all right but couldn’t bring himself to make such a promise just then. “They’re going to take you to the hospital to make sure you’re okay. Your parents will meet you there, so you won’t be alone.” He wiped the tears on his cheeks. “I’m going to go home to wait for my parents, but I’ll be over to see you just as soon as I can.”

  She never looked at him or acknowledged she had heard him. Fear worked its way past the numbness and settled like a block of ice in his gut.

  Lieutenant Collins rested his hand on Brian’s shoulder. “Let the paramedics take care of her. She’ll be okay after they get her to a doctor.”

  As Brian kissed her cheek and then her lips, he wondered if either of them would ever be okay again.

  “Officer Beckett is going to give you a ride home and wait with you until your parents get there, all right?” Lieutenant Collins asked.

  The medical examiner approached, but the lieutenant held up his hand to stop the other man until he had Brian settled.

  Brian nodded and was led to one of the patrol cars. Since the road leading to his house was blocked, the emergency personnel cleared a path to allow the cruiser through. On the brief ride home, it occurred to Brian that this horrific night would come d
own to a matter of minutes. Had the others left the pizza place a minute or two later, maybe they would have arrived safely. Only two bends in the road separated the place where the lives of his brother and their friends had come to a fiery end and the split-level house where he and Sam lived with their parents.

  If Brian and Carly had left the willow a few minutes earlier, they would’ve already been at his house and wouldn’t have witnessed the aftermath. If Brian hadn’t been worried about the teasing that seemed so ridiculous in hindsight, maybe he and Carly would have lingered at the willow a while longer and wouldn’t have seen it. Minutes and seconds, making all the difference between life, death, and purgatory.

  Because he had given his keys to Sam, Brian had no way to get in the house, so he and the patrolman sat in uneasy silence in the driveway.

  While they waited, Brian continued to play the “what if” game as his mind raced with scenarios that somehow might’ve brought about a different end. If he and Carly hadn’t been so anxious to be alone, they would’ve been in the car, too. Remembering how Sam had teased him about taking “a walk” with Carly had Brian sobbing again with the kind of helpless, massive grief from which there’s no escape once it wraps itself with maddening finality around those who are left behind.

  They were the last words he would ever hear his brother say. Ever. Sammy. The numbness began to wear off, and Brian cried the brokenhearted tears of a young man who’d lost his only sibling, the one person in the world who shared most of his memories, his very best friend. He had a lifetime to mourn the others. For right now, he could think only of Sam.

  “Is there anything I can do?” Officer Beckett asked.

  Brian shook his head but couldn’t speak.

  Thirty long minutes passed during which Brian wasn’t sure what he wanted more—his parents to get there because he needed them or for them to stay away for that much longer, to be protected from what they would hear and how it would change them forever. He was grateful they would be coming from the other direction and wouldn’t have to drive past the accident scene. By the time they finally pulled into the driveway behind the cruiser, Brian had decided that Sam had gotten the easier end of this deal.

  His father came rushing out of the car.

  Brian and Officer Beckett got out of the cruiser. The expressions on their faces stopped Chief Westbury in his tracks.

  “What?” he whispered, touching Brian’s face and then his chest, as if to confirm his son was safe. “They said there was an accident. What happened?”

  “Dad,” Brian said, his voice breaking. “It’s Sammy.”

  From behind his father, his mother’s scream was eerily reminiscent of Carly’s. Before Brian could tell them that Sam hadn’t died alone, his mother fainted.

  Chapter 3

  The small town of Granville is nestled in the rural northwest corner where Rhode Island comes together with Connecticut to the west and Massachusetts to the north. With an easy commute to Providence and Boston, Granville attracted executives looking to raise their families in a more bucolic setting. The “commuters” tended to gravitate to the fancy new subdivisions on the south side. Residents who could trace their roots back to the town’s early nineteenth century origins clustered closer to a downtown made up of converted mills from Granville’s glory days as an industrial hub.

  In a town of just over fifteen thousand, the loss of six teenagers touched almost everyone in some way or another, uniting the commuters and the townies in a shared grief that brought the usual buzz of activity to a halt during the week following “the tragedy,” as it came to be known.

  Flags flew at half-mast, routine meetings were canceled, and the high school suspended classes but offered counseling to students who needed help making sense of something that made no sense. With an unexpected week off from school, young people gathered in subdued groups in the town common, at the beach by the lake, and in all their usual hangouts downtown.

  Within two days, the scorched earth around the Tucker Road crash site was almost completely hidden by a makeshift shrine erected by the victims’ classmates. Freshly painted white wooden crosses bearing the six names—Sam, Toby, Pete, Michelle, Jenny, and Sarah—were surrounded by flowers, candles, balloons, stuffed animals, letters, and drawings protected from the elements by plastic bags.

  Thousands of people descended upon the town to pay their respects, to offer their support, and to satisfy the odd curiosity generated by epic tragedy. Recent Granville High School graduates flocked home from colleges around the country, and the story garnered national press coverage.

  On Friday, one week to the day after the accident, Sam was the last to be laid to rest in the town cemetery where six fresh new graves dotted the landscape. Just two rows from his girlfriend Jenny and four rows from Pete, Sam’s final resting place overlooked the town common where he had spent many an aimless afternoon. Standing with his parents at the gravesite after everyone else had left, Brian thought his brother would approve of the location.

  He gave his parents credit for attending all six funerals, something many of the other parents had been unable to do. The lingering numbness from the other five funerals had no doubt helped the Westburys through this unimaginable day. Was it really only a week ago that the eight of us were dancing in Toby’s basement without a care in the world? And now six of them were dead, Carly had yet to fully emerge from the stupor she’d descended into after the accident, and Brian was more alone than he’d ever been in his life.

  His mother dabbed at her swollen eyes with a handkerchief grown sodden with tears.

  Resting a hand on Brian’s shoulder, his father asked, “Are you ready to go, son?”

  Michael Westbury’s broad shoulders were hunched, and his ruggedly handsome face had aged overnight. That his son had been driving the doomed car weighed heavily on the chief, as did the preliminary findings of the investigation.

  “I’m going to take a walk over to check on Carly,” Brian said, adding quickly, “If it’s all right with you.”

  Mary Ann Westbury had clung to Brian over the last week, as if letting him out of her sight might bring about further disaster. He’d done his best to be patient with her, but he needed some distance, some time to process what had happened now that the protracted and agonizing ceremony of grieving had finally ended.

  “What time will you be home?” his mother asked with an anxious frown. Mary Ann, a petite blonde with the hazel eyes she had passed to her sons, was first and foremost a mother. A full-time homemaker, she had devoted her life to her boys and their friends. More than anyone else touched by the tragedy, Brian worried about her. Well, he was desperately worried about Carly, too, but had yet to fully deal with that in the midst of all the other details and concerns of the past week.

  “An hour, maybe two,” he said in answer to his mother’s question. “I’ll call you if I’m going to be any later.”

  He knew she wanted him to come home with them to where their extended family waited to offer what comfort they could, and it seemed to cost her something to nod her approval. “Give Carly our love.”

  “I will.” Brian wondered if it would matter to her.

  They hugged him and left him standing at the top of the hill as they made their way to where the exhausted funeral director waited for them. Brian watched his father put an arm around his mother to guide her down the slope. He hoped they would somehow find a way to survive the crushing loss.

  After they had driven off in the limo, Brian crouched down to run his fingers through the soft dirt that covered his brother. “What’re we supposed to do without you?” he asked in a whisper as grief gave way to the anger that had simmered just below the surface all week. “What were you thinking driving like that? You didn’t even try to slow down. They said there were no skid marks, that you just drove off the road into that tree. You knew better, Sammy! How many times has Dad told us we have to be better than everyone else because of who he is in this town? How could you do this to him?” Brian’
s throat closed, and tears filled eyes already raw and gritty. That there could be any tears left astounded him. His voice was once again a whisper when he added, “How could you do this to me? How could you leave me here all alone?”

  He bent his head and cried the same way he had the night it happened, the same way he suspected he would cry for a long time to come. Over the last week Brian had discovered there was no escape from grief. If he was awake, it hung over every breath, every word, every corner of his life. Sporadic sleep provided no reprieve, haunted as it was by vivid dreams that forced him to relive the horror over and over again.

  Wiping his face, he stood and took a long last look at his brother’s grave before he turned and forced himself to walk away. He ambled down the hill and crossed the street to the sidewalk that wrapped around the town common. A group of boys he knew from school were in a circle playing hacky sack on the grass. They stopped their game to watch him walk by. Brian acknowledged them with a brief nod but didn’t stop. He couldn’t bear to listen to another awkward word of sympathy from peers so far out of their league they said only the wrong things.

  As he left them to continue their game, it occurred to Brian that he didn’t have any friends left. He had plenty of acquaintances but no one he could call to hang out with. He’d always had Sam and Toby, who’d been their friend since they were babies. Their mothers had been close before Mrs. Garrett’s drinking had worsened right around the time the boys started high school.

  They met Pete through Toby, and with the three of them always around, Brian hadn’t felt the need for more close friends. Once he started going out with Carly, he’d had even less of a need for others. The eight of them hadn’t set out to distance themselves from the rest of the kids, but they had nonetheless. Now Brian was left without a friend in the world and a girlfriend who either couldn’t or wouldn’t share her grief with him.

  Wanting to avoid the accident site, he took the long way around downtown to Carly’s house on South Road. They’d once counted the seven hundred and eighty steps between their houses.