Rapid Falls Read online

  “Okay. Thank you.” I take Maggie’s small body in my arms and walk back toward the waiting room.

  I see relief flood through my husband’s eyes as we turn the corner. I go over the doctor’s simple instructions with him: let her sleep, prevent dehydration, and never forget that the things you don’t suspect can hurt you the most. The doctor didn’t tell me the last part. I figured that out for myself a long time ago.

  CHAPTER TWO

  June 1997

  A mechanical hum woke me. I blinked hard, trying to figure out where the noise was coming from and where I was. Pain stabbed my forehead as I turned to the left, where a faint glow of light seeped under a door. A blocky shape beside me beeped, and I realized I was connected to it by a long line clipped to my finger. I turned to the other side, fighting dizziness. A large window was covered with pale green curtains. I was in the hospital. My body ached like I’d been violently tossing and turning all night. I’ve always been a restless sleeper, but I never felt like this. Both times Jesse and I managed to be away for long enough to fall asleep together after sex, Jesse compared the experience to lying with an oversize, easily startled squirrel.

  “But a sexy one,” I had said, nuzzling his neck. “After all, squirrels know where to find the best nuts.”

  “Prove it,” he said, shifting his hips toward me as he laughed. That was my favorite laugh: the one that spilled out because of something I said. I could tell he loved me every time I heard it.

  The thought of Jesse made me jerk upright in bed, only to find that my other arm was also tethered to a machine by a plastic tube. Jesus. What had happened? Even in the dim light, I could see that my arm was covered in angry bruises. I spotted a call button and reached toward it, straining the cords that bound me. Summoning the nurse never looked this clumsy on TV. Seconds after I pressed it, I heard footsteps and voices out in the hallway.

  “She’s awake now. I need a minute, and then you can come see her.” The door opened and light flooded in from the hallway. I caught a glimpse of my dad outside. He looked terrified. A jolt of fear hit me as I remembered the sound of metal destroying metal. And screams.

  “Hi, Cara. I’m just going to take your blood pressure.” The middle-aged nurse looked familiar as she smiled kindly. “I’m Sandy’s mom. You’re going to be okay.” Sandy was Anna’s best friend. I had seen her at the prom last night. Prom.

  “What happened?” I asked her as the band squeezed tighter around my arm. I could hear the fear in my voice. So could she.

  Her smile faded. “There was a car accident.”

  “Is everyone okay?”

  She looked down, but I saw the tears fill her eyes. The ripping sound of the Velcro as she loosened the cuff made me wince.

  “All done. Blood pressure looks good. I’m going to send your dad in now. And the . . . I think Sergeant Murphy wants to speak with you as well.”

  I stared at her as she walked out of the room. What was I supposed to say to the police? The whole point of prom night was to avoid them.

  Last night was supposed to have been the biggest night of my life. Prom began the same way every year. Before the dance, all the graduates draped themselves in overpriced dresses and rented tuxes to march around the hockey rink turned dance floor with nearly the entire town in attendance. Last night the procession had been both exciting and dutiful for me. Jesse and I had seen so many of our older peers go through the ritual that in some ways it felt as if we had already done it ourselves, like we’d seen the photos before our parents even took them. At the same time, I was almost sure he felt the same way as I did, that prom night was our first real step toward the future where he would become my husband. We weren’t engaged yet, but his mom had hinted to me a few months ago that he already had a ring. When we walked past Anna, I beamed at my sister, and she smiled back, though a bit slowly. No surprise. Anna was always jealous. I would be the first to graduate, the first to begin a real life.

  After we finished our promenade, our parents and relatives filed out. A familiar guitar riff reverberated through the room to kick off the dancing portion of the evening. Anna appeared beside me.

  “Want to dance?” She grinned mischievously and I returned the smile. She knew I couldn’t resist our favorite song by Meat Loaf. “The DJ didn’t want to play it, but I insisted. I’m sorry about earlier.”

  “It’s okay.” I brushed off the memory of our argument. It didn’t matter. Tonight I just wanted to have a good time.

  Anna and I had been doing the same dance to the song since I was in seventh grade, when we won first place in a school talent show. We launched into it instinctively. The students around us stopped and formed a circle, laughing and hooting, even though most of them had seen us perform the same routine at least half a dozen times before. When the song ended, we stood still, panting and laughing, as the crowd cheered. Jesse’s best friend, Wade, gave us a long wolf whistle that made me grin.

  “One more?” I pulled her into my arms playfully, initiating a stagey waltz to the orchestral chords of Bette Midler.

  “Only because you love this one so much.” She took my hand, and we moved across the floor. As we slow-danced in and around the people from Rapid Falls we had known all our lives, happiness rose like a bubble in my chest. Anna must have sensed it, because she pulled away so she could look in my eyes.

  “You are my hero, Cara. I hope the next year for you is amazing. Everything is going to change so much after tonight.” Her eyes welled with tears.

  “Thanks, Anna. That means a lot.”

  Anna was my designated driver so Jesse and I could enjoy the night to the fullest. I promised to come back to do the same for Anna and Sandy the next year. Drinking and driving was a big deal in Rapid Falls. Each year we had an assembly a week before prom to remind us about making good decisions. It was how our parents and teachers assured themselves that they had done what they could to protect us. The afterprom party was held every year at the Field, a big property about thirty minutes out of town up a long dirt road. It had been bought and cleared by some guy from the city. No one in Rapid Falls had heard from the man in years, and nobody asked questions about his whereabouts. It was the best party spot in town. No one wanted to ruin a good thing.

  On an average Friday night, if you wanted to get back from the Field, you drove drunk, caught a ride with someone else who was driving drunk, or stayed sober. Very few people chose the last option. On prom night, however, we made sure that our drivers did so. It was important that the graduating class was responsible. In Rapid Falls, prom night was the closest most people came to experiencing celebrity. It wasn’t supposed to end in a hospital bed. Something had gone wrong—really wrong.

  My dad walked in, his face as white as frostbitten fingers. A sickening thud hit my stomach. Was Anna dead?

  “Cara.” He put a hand on my forearm.

  “Where is Anna, Dad?”

  “She’s . . . she’s in pretty rough shape. They had to airlift her to Nicola. Your mom is with her.”

  Images of icy water. Darkness. Screams. Blood. Jesse.

  “Oh my God. Where is Jesse?” My voice tightened around the words, and I had to choke out the last syllable.

  My dad bowed his head. I didn’t want him to say it aloud.

  “He . . .” He shook his head.

  “No, Dad.” My voice didn’t sound like it was coming from my body. Silence filled the room. I saw a windshield with nothing in view but black water. “We went into the river.”

  My dad shuddered as he nodded.

  “This is all my fault,” I said.

  His grip on my arm felt hard enough to bruise. I gasped.

  “Don’t you ever, ever say that, Cara. You got Anna out. You pulled her out of the water alone. I don’t know how you did it, but you saved her life.” His eyes were full of fire and fear.

  I nodded, waiting for grief to consume me, but I felt nothing.

  “But not Jesse,” I said.

  “No, not Jesse. There’
s . . . one more thing, Cara.” My dad tried to put on a reassuring smile. “Sergeant Murphy was here. He needs to talk to you. I told him that you’ll come by later. After we see Anna.”

  “Okay,” I said dully.

  “It’s not good, Cara. They think . . . well, they’ve found alcohol in Anna’s blood. Drugs too. It looks like she was drunk, high. I don’t know.” His voice caught on the words. “She was supposed to be your designated driver. She was supposed to stay sober. What happened, Cara?”

  “I don’t know,” I lied.

  CHAPTER THREE

  June 2016

  The morning after Maggie’s hospital visit, I wake at 5:00 a.m. and roll over to look at my phone. There is nothing urgent in my in-box, just the standard requests for meetings and some draft policy to review. Only one message is personal. Debra Black, an old classmate, is trying to put together an organizing committee for our twenty-year reunion at Rapid Falls High. I delete the message immediately. Sometime in between my song-filled oatmeal breakfast with my daughter and my train into work, all hell breaks loose. I have thirty-six new emails and a dozen missed calls on my phone by the time I get into the office.

  I piece it together quickly. The Fraser City Tribune’s website had published a piece on the new natural gas extraction plant, showing only one-third of the current workers were local. Unfortunately, my boss, Larry, was also quoted, saying, “Above all, natural gas is an economic booster for local communities.” His furious emails to me demanded that I figure out where the Tribune had gotten the conflicting information. When I was a teenager, I had dreamed of running for office, but my history in Rapid Falls had made that impossible. On days like today, when Larry has to wear mistakes so publicly, I’m glad that Anna made me change course. It’s a lot easier to be behind the scenes when things go bad. And I was good at putting out fires.

  My assistant, Michelle, rushes in with a coffee and a frown. “Did you see the story this morning?”

  “Yes. I’ve been dealing with it for the last hour. Where have you been?” I’m taking a calculated risk that she was late again, later than I was. It’s important in my job to keep up appearances.

  She looks down sheepishly. “Transit was slow.”

  I sigh and reach for the coffee. “Just get Henry on the phone. I need to find his source.”

  “Sure.” She walks out of the office.

  My phone buzzes a few minutes later. “Henry is on line one.”

  I click through. “Henry, we have to stop running into each other like this.” I laugh as I take a sip of coffee. I never let anyone see when they have landed a blow.

  Henry laughs too. He knows the game. “Of all the natural gas plants in all the world . . .”

  I chuckle again and then turn serious. “This might hurt you, my friend. Larry is mad. You need to get a source in the office before you write this stuff.”

  “What are you talking about, Cara?” Henry sounds surprised, not defensive, which worries me. “You confirmed this piece. I thought you were calling to thank me.”

  I feel a jolt of tension but keep my voice level. “Me?”

  “Yeah, I got an email from you yesterday with a breakdown of the current employee list at the plant. I was going to text you today and ask if I could buy you a drink. You know, to say thanks.”

  I pivot. “Right, right. I was just hoping you’d follow up before you went to print. I could have given you more context.” My brain is racing, trying to remember what I did yesterday.

  “Didn’t need it. Tight deadline.”

  “Hey, instead of a drink, how about a follow-up with Larry? I can get you an exclusive this afternoon. I think we have some new data that might round this out a bit.”

  “You mean dull the edges? Yeah, sure, maybe. Text me later and I’ll try to spin something your way.” He sounds like he’s not really paying attention. I hate that he’s not committing to anything, but I need to keep a light touch.

  “Okay, great. I’ll be in touch later. We’ll make it worth your while.”

  “Sure. Later.”

  I hang up and breathe in to slow the rising tide of stress. What had happened yesterday? Maggie. Rick’s increasingly frantic calls. Had I been distracted enough to send Henry an email without realizing it? I pull up my email and type Henry’s address in the search field. My stomach sinks. I find a message with a full breakdown of the employee details from the site, sent to all the senior managers and Larry. All the senior managers except one. Instead of sending it to Harold Graves, our financial manager, I’d typed in Henry’s email. A simple mistake, but one for which I could be fired.

  Time for damage control. I’m good at this. I never let emotions get the best of me. I will come up with a plan and see it through. Like I always do. I type an email to Larry. He must not have noticed my error yet; otherwise the anger in his emails would have been directed at me. Larry has never been good at details. That’s why he has me. I forward the message from me to him with the text We need to talk about James. James is the name of my current intern. There is no shortage of eager, ambitious kids available to do the grunt work for a person in a high government position like myself. Kids who can be sacrificed on the altar of self-preservation. I like James and I’ll be sorry to see him go, but I can’t take the fall for a silly email error. I recite calming words to myself as I wait for Larry to respond. I never did stuff like this before I got pregnant, before I had a kid. As Maggie grew in my body, other parts of me began to disappear. The parts that remembered everything—the parts that were in control.

  Larry arrives at my office a few minutes later, looking harassed. He is a good man stuck with a difficult portfolio, and I regret adding more challenges to his day. I’ve known him for years. He trusts me. He runs his hand through his hair in a weary gesture as he takes a seat beside me. “What happened, Cara? That information was in-house only.”

  “I’m so sorry. I had James take over my email for a few hours yesterday. I had to leave to take Maggie to the emergency room.” Larry has two young children, so I know this information will affect him. His expression immediately changes from frustration to concern.

  “Is she okay?”

  I sigh deeply. “We think so, but it’s still a bit uncertain. She’s got transient synovitis.” I use the official diagnosis, knowing it sounds much more serious than it actually is. Larry gasps and I keep going. “We were in the emergency room until eleven last night. Maggie is still struggling this morning. It was hard to leave. Rick is handling it . . . but it’s been tough.”

  “Oh my God, Cara. Give my best to both of them.”

  “I will. Thank you,” I say solemnly. “How should I deal with James?”

  “It’s fine. We can talk about that later. Just take care of your family. Do you need to take the day off, leave early?”

  I press on. I need this mistake to be clearly and definitively the fault of someone else. “Sir, all due respect, this is time sensitive. I want to make this right. I’ve drafted a press release that illustrates that those data are only a snapshot for one month. In the twelve months preceding this, we’ve had nearly seventy percent employment from the local region. I can send it out this afternoon.”

  Larry nods and rewards me with a smile. “That sounds perfect. I’m not sure how things would run without you here, Cara.”

  I laugh self-deprecatingly. “And James . . . ?” I trail off. I need Larry to come to this decision alone.

  “It’s probably best to send him off with a good recommendation at this point,” Larry says, already pulling out his cell phone and scrolling through email.

  “That’s what I thought too. Thanks, sir.”

  “No, thank you, Cara. Thanks for being on top of this. Hope Maggie feels better soon. If you need to go early, please do.”

  “Appreciate it. Oh, and Henry wants to do a follow-up interview with you this afternoon.”

  Larry grimaces slightly, then smiles. “Of course. Schedule it for after three p.m.” I can hear him start to whistl
e as he turns the corner out of my office. Success as a bureaucrat can be measured by how good a person is at ducking responsibility, I think as I walk toward James’s desk to deliver the bad news. The best political tacticians know exactly when to throw someone else under the bus. It’s the reason I’m so good at my job.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  June 1997

  Jesse was late, as usual. I retouched my lip gloss again even though my mouth already felt thick with the coating of pink, watermelon-scented shine. Jesse told me once that my lips always looked like I was about to tell him a dirty joke. My thick reddish-brown hair was swept up in a French twist, and the hairdresser had used white shadow and liner to make my blue eyes pop. I felt sexy, buoyant with joy and a half tablet of a painkiller left over from six months ago when I got my wisdom teeth out. I’d stopped taking them and doled them out carefully for times when I needed to relax. Tonight I wanted to float. Tension made me look ugly in photos.

  I knew my dad would be snapping pictures left and right, overcompensating. Jesse’s dad wasn’t around. Cindy Foster, Jesse’s mom, would occasionally speak of the loser, as she called him, jabbing out her cigarette violently as she described his decision to take up with another woman before Jesse was even born. Jesse was ashamed of his mom’s story, but I didn’t care. When we were kids, all that mattered was that Jesse liked playing with me way more than he liked being with Anna. Jesse and I were the same age, and I could always keep up with him. We often left Anna behind.

  “Did you use my razor?” Anna shouted from the bathroom.

  “Yeah,” I said absently, pulling a stray hair away from my lips.

  “Where is it?” she asked. Her tone was impatient. I knew she hated it when I was the center of attention. Tonight was my prom. It was all about me, and it was driving Anna crazy. I smiled into the mirror, turning my head to make sure my blush was even on both sides.

  “Cara!”

  “Sorry. Um, I’m not sure? On the shelf in the shower?” I said lightly.