Page 12 of The River Is Waiting

“Mr. Ledbetter?”

“Hmm?” I open my eyes to a blur of Black skin, close-cropped hair, huge hoop earrings. As she comes into focus, I take in the business suit, an ID hanging from the lanyard around her neck.

“Are you the grief counselor?” I ask.

“No, sir. I’m Detective Tunisia Sparks, Three Rivers PD.” She flashes a badge. That’s when I notice Sergeant Fazio and Officer Longo standing behind her, their hands behind their backs.

CHAPTER SIX

“I understand your little one didn’t make it,” Detective Sparks says. “I’m very sorry for your loss, sir.” It sounds rote, but I manage a thank-you. “My officers tell me your wife wasn’t at home when the accident occurred, but she’s here in the hospital now. Is that correct?”

I nod. Tell her the doctor we talked to has taken Emily and her mother to see our son. “I think she’s having trouble accepting that he’s…” I squint hard but the tears come anyway. She waits, watching me. When I regain my composure, I apologize.

She shakes her head. “I can appreciate what a difficult time this must be for you, Mr. Ledbetter, but we need to go over some details about what happened. Okay?” I can’t respond. “Your first name is Corbin, right? Can I call you Corbin?” I don’t give a shit what she calls me.

“That’s fine. But look, I’ve already told these officers everything.”

She pulls up a chair and sits, facing me, close enough that our knees almost touch. “And I’ll go through their report, of course. But I always like to hear things firsthand from the people who were involved. For their own protection. So why don’t you tell me in your own words how it happened? Okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

She slides a small notepad from her large black bag. Pulls out the pen stuck in the metal spiral. Says, “Go ahead. Whatever you can remember.”

“Well, like I told these guys, I got the kids ready because they weregoing to my mother-in-law’s. She was going to babysit them for the day. And I… buckled his sister, Maisie, into her car seat. See, I usually buckle him in first,thenher, but he was looking at this swarm of ants in the driveway and… so I buckled her in first.”

“They’re twins. Right?”

“Yes.”

“Any other children?” I shake my head.

“And these are your biological children, right? Yours and your wife’s? Not stepchildren or children you adopted.”

Why did that matter? “No, they’re ours.”

“How old?”

“Twenty-five months. Close to twenty-six.”

“Okay, go on.”

“So our neighbors from across the street drove into their driveway and when they got out of their car, they said something to me and—”

“Said what? Do you remember?”

“Nothing significant. Just chitchat.”

“Can you be a little more specific?”

I nod. “Linda—the wife—called over and said they’d just picked up some breakfast at McDonald’s.… And I remembered I had borrowed a splitting maul from Shawn, the husband, and I told him I’d bring it back to him.”

Sergeant Fazio breaks in to tell her these were the two eyewitnesses and he has their names and contact info. Sparks nods and tells me to go on.

“Linda, the wife, asked how the twins were doing and I told her how they’d scribbled on the floor with crayons the day before. It was just friendly neighbor talk, know what I mean? But I guess our conversation distracted me. I got in the car and I must have just assumed… I must have thought…”

I close my eyes tight to squelch the tears I feel coming. Do the deep breathing thing. “This is just so fucking painful,” I say. “He was still alive when they put him in the ambulance and I thought… And then I findout he died before he even got here. And now I’m here, answering your questions while my wife is… That doctor tried to talk her out of it, but she said she needed to see him. And what is it? Maybe an hour since we found out he didn’t make it. You say you can appreciate how hard this must be, but then you pull out your notebook and make me relive…”

“Just doing my job, sir,” she says.

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