Flight Risk

Capitulo Dieciseis

Picture of Trinity and Brian -------------------------------->

The days and weeks following the death of my family were filled with mourning, revelation and a loss that would leave me reeling long after the initial blow. And it all began a few days after the Granite Falls Grad Night Tragedy when the county coroner called me at my too quiet and depressingly vacant house with a request for me to come into town so he could “discuss a few issues” with me.

The soles of my tennis shoes squeaked loudly on the linoleum floor that had yellowed with time as I made my way to his office. The building had an extremely odd scent to it that smelled like musty Valentine’s Day heart candies. I would later find out that it was a poorly executed attempt to cover up the smell of formaldehyde with some kind of mint air freshener.

My hand was raised to knock on the door when it opened and a tall, muscular, dark skinned guy with dreads appeared before me. Huddled under his arm was a distraught woman with bags under her large chocolate brown eyes that upon further inspection could easily have been his mother. My eyes traveled the foot it took to make eye contact with him and it was surprise that kept me silent as I recognized the quarterback for the Varsity football team. Derik and I had talked on several occasions since we shared a love for sports and he had been one of the fake cheerleaders for the school’s Powderpuff junior girls versus senior girls football games. His usually infectious smile was absent, replaced by a grim set to his lips, and like his mother, he had bags under his eyes from either a lack of sleep or crying. Taking into account where I was running into him, I’d say it was both.

I stepped aside without a word and let them pass because at the moment, I was hardly the person to be handing out hollow words of encouragement. When I let myself in I was immediately greeted by an older man with thinning grey hair in a polyester suit, his suit jacket replaced by a white doctor’s coat. Standing off to the side was another man, younger this time, in the standard policeman’s uniform.

“Have a seat,” the older man said with a flourish of his hand.

Whatever he had to say that would require an officer of the law couldn’t possibly be good, so I took him up on his offer and sat on the hard elementary style plastic chair opposite him.

“Before we get started, may I see some identification? One never can be too careful nowadays.”

With sweaty palms, I handed him my driver’s license which I had already pulled out in anticipation of his request. Everyone seemed to want it these days and having it ready was becoming second nature.

“Miss Anderson, my name is Dr. Raynaldi and I am the pathologist working in conjunction with the police on this terrible tragedy. As you know, autopsies were performed on the drivers of the vehicles involved in the accident. Nothing invasive, mind you, mostly labs and imaging to corroborate with what we hypothesized.”

“We’ve determined that the cause of the accident was an irresponsible drunk driver.”

Guilt like I had never experienced before welled up with in me and the blood drained from my face as I whispered, “Zach.”

“Oh? You know him?” The detective asked with raised brows.

“Yeah,” I answered numbly, “he’s my boyfriend’s older brother.”

A simple and toneless “I see” was the only response I received from him.

“Do they know yet?” I asked, thinking of how devastated Brian would be when he found out.

“Yes,” he replied, “We took him into custody yesterday.”

His answer allowed me to temporarily push my guilt aside in favor of an emotion every teen was familiar with.