“Who is, Lucy? The police told me it was an accident.”
“A reporter. She called me this morning and said she’d heard Cyril Rothmere’s ghost tried to kill someone. She wanted me to give her a quote and let her come out to the mansion to take photos.” Lucy fairly quivered with emotion. “As if Cyril would do such a thing!”
“I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts,” I said.
“I don’t—not really—but some people do, and they are going to tarnish Cyril’s reputation. I won’t stand for it.” The tip of Lucy’s nose turned pink with indignation.
“Braden McCullers is in a coma,” I said pointedly. “He may not recover.”
“Who?” Lucy looked confused but then her face cleared. “Oh, the boy who got hurt. Well, it’s a terrible thing that he’s so badly injured. I certainly hope he gets better soon.”
“That’s nice of you, Lucy,” I said, feeling more kindly toward her. I’d thought her reaction to the incident last night was a bit unfeeling. Maybe she’d just been shocked by it all.
“Of course. When he’s able to talk again, he can tell everyone it wasn’t Cyril who pushed him!”
After breakfast, I called Rachel to see how she was doing. She was at the hospital, she said, and there was no change in Braden’s condition. She sounded woebegone, so I decided to drive up to Brunswick and sit with her for a while. My laundry and real estate listings could wait. State Road 42 led me out of St. Elizabeth to the west where I hooked up with I-95. The trip to Brunswick was painless on a Sunday afternoon and I easily found a parking spot in the hospital lot. High cirrus clouds, the hurricane’s advance guard, obscured the sky and seemed lower than when I left St. Elizabeth. I made a mental note to listen to a weather report on my way back. Passing the gift shop on my way through the lobby, I veered in to pick up a small plant for Braden. Maybe some greenery would speed his recovery. The clerk, wearing cat ears on her head and with whiskers drawn across her cheeks, said, “Happy Halloween,” when I paid.
The ICU waiting room was depressingly full of people. An Asian family clustered together at one end of the room, adults talking quietly while four children watched cartoons on the television with the volume turned low. Braden’s family and friends gathered around a table at the other end of the room, takeout containers emitting the scent of fried chicken cluttering the surface. Rachel sat off to the side by herself, her arms pulling her knees close to her chest, her head bowed. She didn’t see me come in.
Braden’s mother, a plump woman with her son’s wheat blond hair, accepted the plant with thanks. “They don’t allow flowers and such in the ICU,” she told me, “but I’m sure Braden will enjoy this when he’s moved to a regular room. The doctors say they’ll move him this afternoon. That must mean he’s doing better, that he’ll wake up soon, right?” She looked to her husband for confirmation.
He reached over to squeeze her hand. A lanky man with slightly stooped shoulders, he had light brown hair graying at the temples and might have looked distinguished if worry hadn’t been dragging down his face, accentuating the grooves in his forehead and the brackets around his thin lips. “That’s right, Darla. Thank you for being so thoughtful, Miss Terhune. I’m sorry . . . how did you say you know Braden again?”
“Rachel Whitley introduced me last summer,” I said. “And I was a chaperone for the field trip last night.”
Darla McCullers’s mouth fell open a half inch and tears began streaming down her face. Without a word, she turned away and went to sit with two women I knew from their similar profiles had to be her sisters.
Guilt flayed me, like a thousand paper cuts slicing my skin.
“We know you didn’t mean for this to happen,” Mr. McCullers said, pinching the bridge of his nose and squeezing his eyes shut for a moment. “It’s not anyone’s fault. Accidents happen. We can’t protect our kids from everything, can we? From less and less as they get older.” He smiled sadly. “Do you have children, Miss Terhune?”
“No,” I choked out. Darla’s tears and his attempt to absolve me of blame made me feel awful.
“They are life’s greatest joy,” he said, and drifted over to join his wife.
I stood still for a moment, stricken by their grief and the sense that it was my fault. I could tell myself there was no way I could’ve kept an eye on all of the students last night, but that didn’t make me feel better. Neither did reminding myself that there were three other adults present. We’d all allowed ourselves to be distracted by the fireworks, and Braden might die because of our lack of attentiveness. I took two deep breaths and forced myself to move toward Rachel, where she was huddled on the plastic chair. I sat. She raised her head a fraction when my weight rocked the connected chairs.