What He Was Really Doing
“Mom, you need to know what he was really doing while you were in the hospital.”
My daughter’s voice was barely a whisper.
She was holding my hand. Hard. Her fingers were cold. She was standing so close to me that I could feel her breath on my ear.
She kept glancing at the staircase. Where her father had just disappeared with my suitcase.
I looked down at her.
Twelve years old. Brown hair in a ponytail. My nose. Her father’s eyes. Freckles across her cheeks that she hated and I loved. Wearing the purple hoodie she’d had since fourth grade. Too short in the sleeves now.
Her face was white.
“Hannah,” I said. “What are you talking about?”
Upstairs, I heard the bedroom door open. The suitcase thump on the floor.
Hannah’s grip tightened.
“Not here,” she whispered. “Not now. He’ll hear.”
“Hannah—”
“Please, Mom.” Her eyes were wet. “I’ve been waiting a whole month to tell you. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if I should tell you in the hospital. I didn’t want to make you sad when you were hurt.”
Footsteps on the stairs.
Hannah let go of my hand. She stepped back. She put on a smile. A terrible, fake, twelve-year-old smile.
“Do you want some tea, Mom?” she said brightly. Too loud.
Wesley came down the stairs.
I need to start at the beginning.
My name is Molly Hargrove. I’m forty-one years old.
I’m a veterinary technician at a small animal clinic in Spokane, Washington. I’ve been doing it for eighteen years. I hold dogs during their vaccines. I clean cat teeth. I sit with families in the little back room when it’s time to say goodbye to a pet they’ve had for fifteen years.
I’ve been married to Wesley Hargrove for fifteen years.
We met at a Labrador rescue fundraiser. He’d adopted a three-legged black lab named Moose. He was walking Moose around the parking lot at the event, and Moose kept trying to eat my shoelaces.
“I’m so sorry,” Wesley said. “He’s still learning manners.”
“He’s perfect,” I said. I knelt down and scratched Moose behind the ears. “Aren’t you, buddy?”
Wesley watched me with the dog for a long time.
Then he asked me to dinner.
He’s a high school math teacher. At Lewis and Clark High downtown. He’s taught algebra and geometry for nineteen years. He coaches the cross-country team.
He’s steady. That’s the word I’d always used. Steady. He’s never late. He never forgets anything. He packs Hannah’s lunch every morning and cuts her sandwiches into triangles because she likes them that way.
In fifteen years, I’d always been able to count on him.
Always.
Four weeks ago, a driver ran a red light and hit me.
On my way home from work. A Tuesday in late September. Five-forty in the evening. At the intersection of Division and Francis. On the north side of Spokane.
I don’t remember the crash.
What I know, I know from the police report. And the emergency room doctors. And Wesley.
I was going through a green light. A pickup truck came through the red on Francis. Going about thirty-five. It T-boned my little Subaru on the driver’s side.
My pelvis broke in four places. My left hip was dislocated. Three ribs. My left wrist. A concussion.
They took me to Sacred Heart Medical Center. I had surgery that night. Six hours. A metal plate and eleven screws in my pelvis. A rod in my hip.
When I woke up, Wesley was sitting next to my bed.
Holding my hand.
He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. He’d been there for nineteen hours.
“Hey,” he said. His voice cracked. “Hey, Mol. You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”
