the cordless up so her mother could see it. “You need to take this,” she cried shrilly.
Turning off the shower, Deborah grabbed the phone. It was the hospital calling to tell her that Cal McKenna had died.
Deborah felt her heart stop. When she could finally speak, her voice held panic. “Died? How?”
“A cerebral hemorrhage,” the nurse reported.
“But he had a brain scan when he was admitted. Why wasn’t it seen?”
“He wasn’t hemorrhaging then. We’re guessing it started yesterday. By the time the vital signs tipped us off, it was too late.”
Deborah didn’t understand what could have happened. She had checked the man herself on the road—no vital injuries, solid pulse. He had sailed through an initial surgery and regained consciousness. Dead didn’t make sense.
Clutching the towel around her, she asked, “Are you sure it’s Calvin McKenna?”
“Yes. They’ll be doing an autopsy later.”
Deborah couldn’t wait. “Who was on duty when this happened?”
“Drs. Reid and McCall.”
“Can I talk with one of them?”
“They’ll have to call you back. A multiple-car accident just came in. Can I give them the message?”
“Yes. Please.” She thanked the woman and disconnected.
Grace was in tears. “You said he wouldn’t die.”
Bewildered, Deborah handed her the phone and, wanting to cry herself, said, “I don’t know what went wrong.”
“You said his injuries weren’t life threatening.”
“They weren’t. Grace, this is a mystery to me.” She was badly shaken, struggling to make sense of it. “He was in stable condition. They saw nothing on the tests. I have no idea how it happened.”
“I don’t care how it happened,” the girl sobbed. “It was bad enough when I thought about seeing him in class, knowing I was the one who hit him, but now there won’t be any class. I killed him.”
“You didn’t kill him. Killing implies intent. It was an accident.”
“He’s still dead,” Grace wailed.
Death was a sidebar to Deborah’s job. She saw it often— fought it often. Calvin McKenna’s death was different.
She couldn’t think of a single useful thing to say. For her own comfort as much as her daughter’s, she simply wrapped her arms around Grace.
Deborah didn’t have the heart to make Grace go to school. The girl argued—rightly—that word would spread, and it seemed unfair to subject her to all that attention until they knew more. But neither of the doctors on call phoned back, which meant that there was little she could say to make Grace feel better.
There was no explanation for why the teacher had died— which was what she told Mara Walsh, the school psychologist, as soon as she came in. She and Mara often worked together with students struggling with anorexia or drug abuse, and, when a student had died of leukemia the year before, they jointly gathered a team of grief counselors.
Mara was shocked by today’s news. She asked questions Deborah couldn’t answer and shed little light on Calvin McKenna, other than to say that he had a Ph.D. in history— a surprise to Deborah, since he neither used the title nor listed the degree on the school website.
When Deborah hung up, she found Dylan listening. “Died?” he asked, his skin pale, eyes huge behind his glasses. Since his grandmother’s death three years before, he had known what death meant.
Deborah nodded. “I’m waiting for a call from his doctor to explain why.”
“Was he old?”
“Not very.”
“Older than Dad?”
She knew where he was headed. The divorce, coming only a year after Ruth Barr’s death, had compounded his sense of loss. “No. Not older than Dad.”
“But Dad’s older than you.”
“Some.”
“A lot,” the boy said, sounding nearly as upset as her parents when Deborah, at twenty-one, had married a man seventeen years her senior. But Deborah had never felt the difference in age. Greg had always been energetic and young. A free spirit through his teens and twenties, he hadn’t grown up until his thirties—this, by his own admission—which meant that he and Deborah felt much closer in age than they really were.
“Dad is fifty-five,” she said now, “which is not old, and he isn’t dying. Mr. McKenna was hit by a car. If that hadn’t happened, he’d be alive.”
“Are they gonna arrest you for killing him?”
“Absolutely not. It was a terrible accident in the pouring rain.”
“Like the night Nana Ruth died?”
“Nana Ruth wasn’t in an accident, but yes, the weather was bad.” The rain had been driven by near-hurricane winds the night Ruth had died. Deborah would never forget the drive into town to be with her for those last hours.
“Are they gonna bury him?”
“I’m sure they will.” There would definitely be a funeral, plus headlines in the local paper. She could see it—a big front page piece, along with a description of the accident naming those in the car.
“Will they bury him near Nana Ruth?”
She pulled herself together. “That’s a good question. Mr. McKenna didn’t live here very long. He may be buried somewhere else.”
“Why isn’t Grace dressed?”
Grace was on a stool at the kitchen counter. Shoulders slouched, she wore the T-shirt and boxer shorts she had slept in. She was nibbling on her thumbnail.
“Grace?” Deborah begged and, when the thumb fell away, said to Dylan, “She’s not going to school. She’s staying home while we try to learn something more.” Deborah tapped her laptop. Patients would be e-mailing. Taking care of their problems would ground her.
“I want to stay here, too,” Dylan said.
Deborah typed in her password. “There’s no need for that.”
“But what if they arrest you?”
“They won’t arrest me,” she scolded gently.
“They could. Isn’t that what police do? What if I come home and find out you’re in jail? Who’ll take care of us then? Will Dad come back?”
Deborah grasped his shoulders and bent down so that their eyes were level. “Sweetie, I am not going to jail. Our chief of police, no less, said that there was no cause for worry.”
“That was before the guy died,” said the boy.
“But the facts of the accident haven’t changed. No one is going to jail, Dylan. You have my word on that.”
She had no sooner given her word, though, when she began to worry. She had to force herself to reply to her patients: No need to be anxious, Kim, your daughter hasn’t even been on antibiotics for a full day; Yes, Joseph, we’ll call in a refill for the inhaler; Thanks for the update, Mrs. Warren, I’m pleased you’re feeling better.
The day before, when her father had