Page 70 of The First Gentleman

What the hell?

The woods are lit up with flashing red and blue lights.

I brake hard. Everything comes at me like freeze-frames every time I blink.

Garrett’s rental car. An ambulance. Two police cars. Uniformed cops standing on the porch of a cabin.

I put the Subaru in park and jump out. I start running. One of the cops jumps off the porch and heads straight for me.

“What happened?” I call out. “I’m meeting my boyfriend here!”

The officer has the sturdy build of a lacrosse player. She stops me cold. “Honey, you can’t go in there.”

My ears start ringing, and she keeps talking but her wordssound like they’re coming from underwater. “What’s your boyfriend’s name?” She’s staring right into my eyes. “Sweetheart! Listen! Who were you meeting here?”

I try to push past her, but it’s no use. She has her legs planted wide.

There’s a glow coming from the cabin. Bright lights. Brighter than a fire.

“Garrett!” I shout. “Where are you?”

“Garrett? And what’s the last name?” The cop is in my ear. She’s half holding me, half hugging me.

“Wilson! Garrett Wilson!”

“Okay, honey. I need you to come sit down with me.” She pulls me toward a wooden bench under a pine tree. My eyes are fixed on the cabin door. The number 19 is carved into it.

No!

I don’t know how, but I tear myself away from her and run up the steps to the cabin. Two more cops grab me.

But it’s too late. I can see inside.

A blanket on the floor. Blood.

Garrett!

PART

TWO

ONE WEEK LATER

CHAPTER

67

Brooklyn, New York

Iwake up slowly in the small room that was mine from infancy to age eighteen. Bed in one corner, small desk and chair in another. Bookcases along every wall.

For a few brief, merciful seconds, everything feels right. Normal. Then the heavy wave of grief rolls in again. It picks me up and swallows me. I pull my sheet and blanket up around my chin as if they can protect me. But they can’t. Nothing can.

Over the desk is a bulletin board with thumbtacked-on color photos, from my formal first-grade picture to the high-school graduation photo where I’m flanked by Mama and Pops, all of us smiling, me looking like I have a whole bright, shiny future waiting.

That confident young girl is gone. So is the confident young woman she grew into. And so is that bright, shiny future.

A soft knock. “Brea, can I come in?”

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