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head and kissed me on the cheek. I caught a whiff of her French perfume and a splash of cinnamon mouthwash, but as she pulled away I saw that feral wildness in her eyes, the empty hopelessness I’d sometimes glimpse when she thought I wasn’t looking; the glazed look of a wounded deer as it lies dying on the forest floor.
    Her hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly the knuckles were white. She glanced at me in the rear-view mirror and smiled, but her eyes were puffy and red.
    If I’d refused to get in the car with her, maybe it never would have happened.
    Mom might still be alive.
    Now
    I hear myself screaming.
    Hair unkempt, Dad comes skidding into the study in his bathrobe. I fight to draw breath into my constricted airways. He settles beside me on the chair’s armrest and pulls my sweaty head against his chest. “It’s okay, Jeremy. It’s okay,” he murmurs.
    I force my breathing to calm and pull away.
    “Was it one of those nightmares again? I thought you stopped having those.”
    My heart speeds up again. I want to run. I want to run.
    I want to drink.
    “I’m okay, Dad,” I finally manage to say. “It happens sometimes, but not as much as—you know—when it happened. I’m kind of used to it, I guess.”
    He stands, pats my head, and then steps back and stares at me for a beat before he speaks. “The doctor tells me that these things are normal after a trauma. And you’ve just been through another…” He stops, the words that almost slipped out trapped safely behind his teeth. “Get some sleep. You sure you don’t want me to help you onto the daybed?”
    I meet his gaze, questions sizzling on my tongue. The ones I’ll never ask.
    Why? Why did she do it?
    Dad looks so earnest. So concerned.
    Yet no words have ever been spoken between us about what caused my mother to drink every afternoon—and drive her car off the road into the Riverton Gorge with her nine-year-old son strapped into the backseat.
    I feign sleep and listen to his slippered feet retreat to the hall, back to the world beyond this room.
    And now I can’t stand it anymore. Dad’s study has become the inside of Mom’s car as we sailed over the embankment and plunged into the Gorge, dark waters rising to my eyes, filling my mouth and throat. The pressurized silence as Mom’s hair floated free from its binding in slow motion, like the sea anemones I’d seen at the aquarium.

    I wait a half hour until the house noises go silent. Until I’m certain Dad has gone back to sleep. Grabbing the crutches, I throw them over my lap and wheel myself into the kitchen.
    Dad’s stash is in the pantry. He thinks I don’t know that he’s never tossed out the contents of Mom’s well-stocked bar, the rows of Absolut lined up like my collection of tin soldiers. He’s hidden the treasure trove behind a few massive bags of barbecue charcoal. Over the years I’ve been refilling them with water.
    I can’t imagine why he keeps them.
    A shrine to Mom? A test for me?
    I raise myself gingerly onto the crutches, appalled how tough it is to balance, even with my workout regimen. I hobble into the dark pantry, careful not to scrape the crutches or fall. I’m shaky; the need for the liquor’s cold warmth calls out from deep inside my bones, drowning out the shame I feel as I reach for what killed my mother and almost killed me eight years ago.
    I find the bottle I’ve marked as having the purest undiluted vodka. I’ve only turned to the pantry as a last resort, so there’s plenty to last me.
    Uncapping the bottle, I take a swallow, knowing how the liquid will dull my mind, slow my reflexes and make balancing on these crutches an Olympic challenge. But I’ve run marathons after downing half a bottle. And won.
    Then
    The next day at school, Susannah was wearing an identical black T-shirt, this time with white cargo pants and flip-flops. Her toenails were painted black; though I tried not to stare at her feet, I couldn’t help but notice there were