Chapter 5 - The Wrong Thing
He tried that night.
He waited until after dinner, until after she'd had her bath and was in bed with the lamp on and a book she wasn't reading open in her lap.
He knocked on her doorframe.
"Hey."
"Hey."
"Can I sit?"
She shrugged. He sat on the edge of the bed.
For a while he said nothing. He had rehearsed this in the car on the way home, and then again in the bathroom with the faucet running. Every version had sounded like a speech. Every version had sounded like something a doctor would say.
He had never been good at this. Even before the accident. Claire had been the one who could sit down with Amelia and find the right words.
"Amelia."
"Yeah."
"Dr. Patel told me what you said. About the accident."
She went very still.
"I want you to know something."
"Dad—"
"It wasn't your fault."
"That's not—"
"Amelia. Listen to me."
"I don't want to talk about it."
"I know you don't. But we have to."
"No we don't."
"Your mom turned because she was changing lanes. The police report says—"
"I don't care what the police report says!"
The book slid off her lap and hit the floor. She was crying now, hard, the kind of crying that came from someplace deep and old and had been waiting a long time to come out.
"You don't know," she said. "You weren't there."
"I know."
"Then stop saying it wasn't my fault like you were there!"
"I'm saying it because I know it's true—"
"You don't know what I said to her!"
The room went quiet.
Grant sat there. His hands were shaking. He had spent fourteen months trying to fix his daughter, and he had never once asked her what she remembered.
"What did you say?" he asked.
Amelia wiped her face with her sleeve. Her voice came out small and shredded.
"I told her I hated her."
Grant felt something break behind his ribs.
"I told her I hated her because she wouldn't let me have the song. And then she turned around. And then the car came."
She was sobbing now, her whole body shaking. "And so it's my fault. And I'm not allowed to walk. Because if I walk, then it's like it didn't happen. And I have to keep it happening. I have to."
Grant reached for her.
She flinched away.
"Don't."
"Amelia—"
"Go away."
"Please—"
"GO AWAY!"
He stood up. He walked to the door. He stopped with his hand on the frame.
"Okay," he said. "I'm going."
He closed the door behind him.
He stood in the hallway with his back against the wall and slid down until he was sitting on the floor. Through the door, he could hear his daughter crying.
He sat there for an hour.
He did not go back in.
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He had never, in his whole life, felt more like a coward.
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