Page 3 of Don't Regret Me
The only people who never lost faith in her were her kids. To them, there were so many unknowable parts of life that a coma dreamland wasn’t out of the question.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she wasn’t sure who’d call her this late, so she didn’t answer it.
It went still before another call came through. Pulling it free, she stared at Jasmine’s name on the screen. This was the foreboding she’d felt before, the news that was coming.
Her dad snatched the phone and answered it. “Jasmine, hello, dear.” He loved the reporter who’d become a good friend to Liz. “Liz was taking too long to answer.” Something Jasmine said made his smile drop. “Sure, here she is.”
He handed Liz the phone, his eyes never leaving her.
“Hey, Jas.” Liz closed her eyes, waiting for whatever Jasmine had to say.
“The verdict came in this afternoon.” Her voice was quiet, as if saying this out loud was a strain.
“And?”
“He’s been found guilty of a DUI resulting in serious injury.”
She’d known it was coming. There was no proof that Nick hadn’t knowingly taken drugs and gotten behind the wheel of his rental car, but the man she’d known for that short period never would have done that. He wouldn’t have put anyone else at risk.
“It’s a third-degree felony,” Jasmine went on. “I doubt he’ll go to jail, but the consequences will be rough.”
“They probably should be.” If it was truly what he did, he deserved it all. Yet, she couldn’t help wishing she and Jasmine had been able to find some way to help him. They’d tried everything, looked into every dark place in this town to find the man who’d rented the car or anyone else with a connection to what happened. And there was nothing.
Liz closed her eyes, drawing in a deep breath. “Jas, I think it’s time to stop.”
“Liz, you?—”
“We need to move on with our lives. I need to move on. I can’t keep doing this, letting thoughts of him into my life.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Brunch soon? A Nick-free brunch.”
“Yeah.” She laughed, but there was a sad note to it. “What will we have to talk about without Nick?” It was a joke but also something Liz worried about recently. She’d centered so much of her world around helping a man who didn’t even know her. She wasn’t sure what parts of her weren’t tangled up in him.
“Night, Jas.”
As soon as she got off the phone, Liz stood, unable to look at her dad. She knew what she’d see. Too much sympathy, too much pity.
“I’m going to go kiss my kids.” They were the only thing holding her together as of late. No, that was a lie, old thinking. When she was sick, they kept her going. Now, she still loved them with everything she was, but that was more than the cancer.
When she stopped thinking of everything she lost, she could remember what she’d gained since the coma. A job she loved, a good friend, and a new confidence. Her life was so different it was like the coma was the rift in the fabric of the world, separating it into a before and after.
She stopped in the doorway of Evelyn’s room, finding the bed empty. Moving next door to where Owen normally slept in his Pokémon sheets, she again found no head against the pillow.
“I swear they were there when I went outside,” her dad said from behind her.
Liz wasn’t worried. This wasn’t the first time she’d come home to find their rooms devoid of their presence. “I know where they are.”
Heading down the hall, she turned into the room she’d lived in since she was a teenager, finding her queen bed full of her two favorite people on Earth. Quietly, she shut the door and changed into pajamas before pulling back the blankets to slip underneath.
Without waking, Owen curled into her, and she slid an arm around him.
“Mom?” Evelyn sat up.
“Hi, baby. Go back to sleep.”
“We saw that man on the news tonight,” she whispered.
