Page 26 of The Bane of a Sinner
“We need to talk,” he whispered low, never taking his eyes off the floor as he sat hunched over, his arms resting on his legs.
“We can talk later.”
“Someone cut the brakes.”
“What?” I barely managed to croak, my question ripped from me by a sudden, icy wave of terror. Slowly, agonizingly, he turned, his gaze locking onto mine—a cold, unwavering stare that burned through my soul.
I knew.
I knew with a sickening certainty that he wasn’t lying. Something was profoundly, terrifyingly wrong. The official police report, with its bland, sterile words, felt like a cruel mockery of the brutal reality. The slick spot, the winter storm, the black ice—it was a carefully constructed lie, a thin veneer over a horrifying truth. The image seared itself onto my brain: Montana’s car, a mangled wreck in the icy river; my sister thrown against the shattered windshield; the sickening crunch of glass and bone echoing in the silence of the frigid water. Theblood, the chilling breath of death. Amy, my sister, unrestrained, thrown like a rag doll into a watery grave.
Slowly turning to George, I found the fucker glaring right at me when a sharp-dressed woman walked in and greeted George. I watched as they talked quietly before George whispered something to Virginia, then left without her.
The second they were gone, Montana said, “You should have told me. I could have helped. Dad knows, August. I heard him talking to someone before we left for the game. They are planning to take Diana out tonight.”
Before I could even breathe the question, two figures in sterile white materialized in the suffocating air of the waiting room. The fluorescent lights hummed a sickly-sweet tune, a counterpoint to the rising dread in my chest.
“Lansing?” one barked, the sound like a hammer blow.
My parents, their faces etched with a fear I’d never seen, surged forward, Barb a frantic whirlwind between them.
Then, the voice.
The cold, sterile voice, as cold as glacial water that had nearly claimed me, began the sentence that shattered their world. “I’m so sorry,” it rasped, the words a cruel mockery. A shriek, raw and animalistic, ripped through the air—Barb’s. My father, his face a mask of agonizing control, caught her before she collapsed like a broken marionette. Kansas, a blur of motion, erupted from the room, Virginia trailing close behind, her eyes already brimming with unshed tears. Julia—the rock of our family—stood frozen, a statue carved from grief. Her voice, brittle as ice, cut through the silence.
“Finish it.”
The doctor, his eyes shielded behind mirrored lenses, hesitated, then delivered the blow with the precision of a surgeon’s knife. “Your daughter suffered catastrophic brain trauma. The prolonged exposure to the icy water... the lack ofoxygen... it’s... she’s in a coma. Every test confirms it. Minimal brain activity. We... we don’t expect her to survive the night.”
His words hung in the air, thick and suffocating, each syllable a lead weight pressing down on my soul. The sterile scent of antiseptic couldn’t mask the taste of blood—my blood—that seemed to fill the room.
Grief was a strange beast. It chewed you up, spit out your bones, and expected you to walk on trembling legs as you stared into the cold blaze of the future. I remembered sinking into the plastic chair, numb, as my world spun on its axis, dragging me along in its merciless orbit. There were voices—some gentle, some clinical, all echoing hollow in the cavern that had replaced my chest. Someone took my hand; I couldn’t tell who, and it didn’t matter. The nurse’s clipboard scratched across the counter, a grim punctuation, as Montana clung to me, his voice barely a whisper lost in the sterile hum. “It’s not fair. None of it.”
Minutes blurred into hours as the machinery of the hospital did its silent, indifferent work. Shadows passed like ghosts against the frosted windows, families divided by tragedies of their own. I heard distant snippets of conversation—Barb’s wails, my dad’s strangled prayers, Julia’s orders, and the calm monotone of the doctor.
And then, gradually, the waiting room emptied.
What remained was the echo of loss, the chill of uncertainty, as a family splintered beneath the weight of a single, merciless son of a bitch, and I braced myself for what came next.
Anger.
That was what came next when I whispered, “It was him.”
“What?”
Slowly turning my head toward my best friend, I sneered, “It was your fucking father. He did this.”
Montana’s eyes widened, shock flickering across his features before something colder—something raw—settled in his gaze.“You don’t know that, August,” he managed, but even as he said it, I watched as he balled his fist tight, until his knuckles turned white.
“Yes, I do.” My words came out cracked, brittle with the weight of everything unsaid. I wanted to rage, to shatter something, anything, just to feel the world react. But the only sounds were the beeping monitors and the soft thud of my own heart, failing to drown out the image of my sister lying lifeless in a bed. “He’s always hated my family. Hated me. You know what he’s capable of. You remember what he did to Meredith. One minute she was here, the next gone.”
Montana swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Let’s not—don’t do this now. Not here.”
But there was no later, no safe place to put this anger, this certainty that rot had crept into the bones of my life. My voice shook as I pressed on. “Did you know?”
The hallway seemed to stretch; the shadows lengthened as though they leaned in to listen. Montana looked away, jaw clenched, before whispering, “Know what?”
“You motherfucker.”
