It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new story

This time the story had to start with a specific line: Let it ring, I said.

Accident


“Let it ring,” I said. “Do not pick it up.”

“But it’s just going to ring forever if we don’t.”

“Then turn the ringer off. Or unplug it. You are not to speak to anyone about this, do you understand me?”

"What if it's Mom?"

"It won't be."

“But what if she needs us to—”

“Nathan, do you understand me.”

“Yes, Dad.”

The phone had been ringing off the hook since shortly after 4 o’clock that afternoon. I answered it the first couple times, but after that I stopped picking up. They wanted details I couldn't give. Next thing, three local news affiliates were parked out front, and the cameraman from channel 3 was trampling the snapdragons near the mailbox. Sue had somehow managed to keep the neighborhood dogs from peeing on them all spring, but the moment she was away they were dashed to bits.

She is going to be away for a while, I thought.

The phone was suddenly quiet. Nathan must have unplugged it, or maybe they got wise and saw that we weren’t the story here. I mean, we were, by default, by terrible default, but they must have turned their attention to the mother. What could we have said, anyway?

It. Was. An. Accident.

She didn’t run on purpose. Shock, maybe. Or she didn’t even know what had happened. She kept going, but there was a reason. My wife would not do such a thing.

So I stood in the doorway and watched through the peephole. The reporters were talking to Roberta from across the street. She would be talking knowingly, as if she and Sue had coffee together every weekend. And she would be loving every minute of it.

There was nothing for me to do until the morning. The lawyer had been called. Sue’s father—in no condition for news like this, but better that he heard it from me than the TV—knew. Nathan was upstairs. And they wouldn’t let me see her until the next day.

It was an accident. Could have happened to anyone. But it happened to us. My wife was in custody, people were shaking their heads, and I was left with an entire night to wait, impotently. To say nothing of what had happened and was happening outside of our strangely silent house.

“Dad.” Nathan ducked his head down the stairs. “Can I go with you tomorrow to see her?”

I sighed. I had no idea if that was a suitable place for a 15-year-old boy. “We’ll see.”

“Please.” His lower lip trembled a little. I could see it from across the room.

“You know she’s going to be fine, right?”

He nodded stiffly.

“She is. It was an accident. And accidents happen, right? It just needs to be sorted out, that’s all.”

“What happened to the kid?”

No reason to tell him. “I don’t know.”

He burst into tears.

I walked toward him. He was crouched now on the stairs, looking like a small child.