I knew that was a bad analogy, but I liked it. It made all these hours of staring at these video feeds feel more important.
I ran another check of all the cameras, then set the alarm so that my phone would buzz if anything happened. I was exhausted and I’d been in the same clothes for forty-eight hours now. Time to go to my tiny cottage.
I rolled myself to the front doors and slid down the ramp Ash had professionally installed shortly after he bought the place, landing on the rocky path that would take me to my cottage. I could see the lights on in Kirkland’s cottage and found myself wondering who he was entertaining tonight. Both Joss and Donovan’s cottages were dark. I knew Donovan was probably with Kate tonight. I almost envied him. To have someone welcome you into their bed so warmly each and every night…must be nice.
“Hey, David!”
Bobby, one of several men Ash employed to watch the grounds twenty-four seven called to me from his patrol cart. I waved back, pretending to be cheerful and not totally annoyed that he just frightened me out of my reverie.
My cottage was the closest to the main house. The floor plan was similar to the others: a decent-sized living room, a gallery kitchen, and a bedroom with en suite bathroom. Only mine had been modified to allow more space in the kitchen and for the walk-through shower that allowed me to use a specially designed chair to independently shower.
I went directly to the bathroom and undressed, maneuvering my legs this way and that as I struggled to get out of my jeans in a sitting position. There were times when I wished I could wear something simpler, something that didn’t require nearly falling out of my chair just to get the heavy denim over my hips. I was glad there was no one there to watch my ungraceful twists and turns.
Once naked, I transferred myself to the other chair and rolled into the shower, flipping on the water and moving just out of reach of the spray until it was good and hot. The water felt amazing as it washed over me. I closed my eyes and tried not to think, but that was like asking a man who’d just walked a thousand miles in the desert not to drink the water offered him.
Getting into the car the second and third time wasn’t as hard as I’d imagined it would be. It was still difficult, watching the world come hurtling at me and knowing there was nothing I could do if there was a sudden accident. Maybe that’s what it was about getting into cars. Maybe I needed to be in control. But, again, I’d been in control the night my parents died and look where that got me.
That night should have been one of those that I remembered fondly all my life. It was just my parents and myself in the hotel suite most of the night, talking about the past, about early campaigns in my father’s career with which my brother and I had done what we could to help. One of my earliest memories was of helping my mother stuff envelopes with campaign brochures that praised my father’s best qualities as a potential state senator. My childhood—and Ash’s—revolved around our father’s career…and that sounds like it would have become tedious or felt overwhelming. But it wasn’t. We were a close family. There was never any resentment.
But then that night.
My father had been convinced that the bid for Congress was overreaching. He felt as if he was such a local persona that people outside of Austin would not vote for him. He was wrong. He won the election with more than fifty-eight percent of the vote. That’s why the champagne came out in cases rather than bottles. And why my father was so very drunk when we finally left the hotel. He almost never drank that much. And that was why I was driving.
I’ve played that moment over and over in my mind. Two years, seven months, and two weeks. Every night. Every morning. Every time I stopped to take a break during my day. Constantly. And every time I thought about it, I picked and picked at that moment, at the moment when I knew everything had gone out of control. I thought about the things I could have done differently and how I could have changed the outcome. They say that hindsight is fifty-fifty. Mine certainly was.
So many regrets.
I understood why Ash was pushing the surgery so hard. I could see it from his point of view. If it was Ash in my position, I would be pushing him, too. But he didn’t understand how heavy the weight of the guilt was on my shoulders. He didn’t understand that as much as I would like to get out of this chair the guilt just made my stomach turn when I thought about walking again, walking away from an accident that took my parents’ lives. I couldn’t handle the idea of living a full life when they couldn’t. It just didn’t seem right.
My father could have made a difference in Congress. He could have gone on to something bigger and better. Hell, for all I know, he could have been president one day. Because of one second, one action, all that was taken away.