Just One Look

Either way, be it from memory or press reports, it was at this very moment when someone fired a shot. Then another. And another.

This was before the days of metal detector sweeps when you entered an arena. Anyone could carry in a gun. For a while, there had been much debate over the origins of those shots. Conspiracy nuts still argued over the point, as if the arena had a grassy knoll in the upper tier. Either way, the young crowd, already in a frenzy, snapped. They screamed. They broke. They rushed for exits.

They rushed toward the stage.

Grace was in the wrong spot. Her waist was crushed against the top of the steel girder. It dug into her belly. She could not pry herself free. The crowd cried out and surged as one. The boy next to her—she would later learn that he was nineteen years old and named Ryan Vespa—didn’t get his hands up in time. He smacked the girder at a bad angle.

Grace saw—again was it just in the dream or in reality too?—the blood shoot from Ryan Vespa’s mouth. The girder finally gave way. It tilted over. She fell to the floor. Grace tried to get her footing, tried to stand, but the current of screaming humans drove her back down.

This part, she knew, was real. This part, being buried under a mass of people, haunted more than just her dreams.

The stampede continued. People stomped on her. Trampled her arms and legs. Tripped and fell, slamming down on her like stone tablets. The weight grew. Crushing her. Dozens of desperate, struggling, slithering bodies rushed over her.

Screams filled the air. Grace was underneath it now. Buried. There was no light anymore. Too many bodies on top of her. It was impossible to move. Impossible to breathe. She was suffocating. Like someone had buried her in concrete. Like she was being dragged underwater.

There was too much weight on her. It felt as if a giant hand was pressing down on her head, squashing her skull like it was a Styro-foam cup.

There was no escape.

And that, mercifully, was when the dream ended. Grace woke up, still gulping for air.

In reality, Grace had woken up four days later and remembered almost nothing. At first she thought it was the morning of her political science final. The doctors took their time explaining the situation. She had been seriously injured. She had, for one, a skull fracture. That, the doctors surmised, explained the headaches and memory loss. This was not a case of amnesia or repressed memory or even anything psychological. The brain was damaged, which is not infrequent with this kind of severe head trauma and loss of consciousness. Losing hours, even days, was not unusual. Grace also shattered her femur, her tibia, and three ribs. Her knee had split in two. Her hip had been ripped out of its joint.

Through a haze of painkillers, she eventually learned that she had been “lucky.” Eighteen people, ranging in age from fourteen to twenty-six, had been killed in the stampede that the media dubbed the Boston Massacre.

The silhouette in the doorway said, “Mom?”

It was Emma. “Hi, sweetheart.”

“You were screaming.”

“I’m okay. Even moms have bad dreams sometimes.”

Emma stayed in the shadows. “Where’s Daddy?”

Grace checked the bedside clock. It was nearly 4:45 A.M. How long had she been asleep? No more than ten, fifteen minutes. “He’ll be home soon.”

Emma did not move.

“You okay?” Grace asked.

“Can I sleep with you?”

Plenty of bad dreams tonight, Grace thought. She pulled back the blanket. “Sure, honey.”

Emma crawled onto Jack’s side of the bed. Grace threw the blanket back over her and held tight. She kept her eyes on the bedside clock. At exactly 7 A.M.—she watched the digital clock switch from 6:59 A.M.—she let panic in.

Jack had never done anything like this before. If it had been a normal night, if he had come up and told her that he was going grocery shopping, if he had made some clumsy double entendre before leaving, something about melons or bananas, something funny and stupid like that, she’d have been on the phone with the police already.

But last night had not been normal. There had been that photograph. There had been his reaction. And there had been no kiss good-bye.

Emma stirred beside her. Max entered in mid–eye rub a few minutes later. Jack was usually the one who made breakfast. He was more the early riser. Grace managed to whip up the morning meal—Cap’n Crunch with sliced banana—and deflected their questions about their father’s absence. While they were busy wolfing down breakfast, she slid into the den and tried Jack’s office, but nobody picked up the line. Still too early.

She threw on a pair of Jack’s Adidas sweats and walked them to the bus stop. Emma used to hug her before she boarded, but she was too old for that. She hurried aboard, before Grace could mumble something idiotically parental about Emma being too old for hugs but not too old to visit Mom when she was scared at night. Max still gave her a hug but it was quick and with a serious lack of enthusiasm. They both stepped inside, the bus door swooshing to a close as though swallowing them whole.

Grace blocked the sun with her hand and, as always, watched the bus until it turned down Bryden Road. Even now, even after all this time, she still longed to hop in her car and follow just to be sure that that seemingly fragile box of yellow tin made it safely to school.

What had happened to Jack?

She started back toward the house, but then, thinking better of it, she sprinted toward her car and took off. Grace caught up to the bus on Heights Road and followed it the rest of the way to Willard School. She shifted into park and watched the children disembark. When Emma and Max appeared, weighed down by their backpacks, she felt the familiar flutter. She sat and waited until they both headed up the path, up the stairs, and disappeared through the school doors.

And then, for the first time in a long time, Grace cried.

• • •

Grace expected cops in plainclothes. And she expected two of them. That was how it always worked on television. One would be the gruff veteran. The other would be young and handsome. So much for TV. The town police had sent one officer in the regulation stop-you-for-speeding uniform and matching car.

He had introduced himself as Officer Daley. He was indeed young, very young, with a smattering of acne on his shiny baby face. He was gym muscular. His short sleeves worked like tourniquets on his bloated biceps. Officer Daley spoke with annoying patience, a suburban-cop monotone, as if addressing a class of first graders on bike safety.

He had arrived ten minutes after her call on the non-emergency police line. Normally, the dispatcher told her, they would ask her to come in and fill out a report on her own. But it just so happened that Officer Daley was in the area, so he’d be able to swing by. Lucky her.