Chapter One

THREE DAYS, FIVE hours, and twenty-two minutes.

Mom kept crying. Her puffy eyes hadn’t stopped swelling for a few hours now and she could hardly breathe. I told her it was all right, but she kept hugging me, rubbing my hands in hers. She said that she would never understand why these kinds of things would happen to people, but God was always in control. I felt like that was just something people said. When they couldn’t figure out the words, it was always, "In God’s hands."

Daddy sat in the corner of the room with his thick-framed glasses brushing against his pepper gray-haired sideburns. He was a calm man by nature. Grams said when he was born there was only a whisper to show he was alive. But when she held him in her arms for the first time, he smiled to her. And he hadn’t stopped smiling since. Until today. Today, he sat there in the corner. Looking my way. Not pressuring me to get better. Not pushing me to express anything.

I turned away from Mom as I lay in the hospital bed and looked outside to the sky. I couldn’t grasp what was happening. It was a complex world. How could the sun shine so brightly and look so welcoming in the wake of such an event? The birds sang and danced past the window and the kids laughed down on Jefferson Street as they went to the county’s fair. The dogs barked and Ms. Jacobson gossiped. Outside the world of Albany, Wisconsin, was completely normal. Happy. But inside this cold, darkened room, I sat in a hospital bed. My left leg in a sling and my body bruised on the outside, but the internal damage of my soul was the worst.

Mom tried her best to silence her muffled tears by covering her mouth, as if she didn’t want me to hear her—to avoid my suffering. But I didn’t mind. It was better to hear her than the laughter. She worried for my safety. My calm demeanor scared her the most. But it appeared she was breaking down enough for all of us.

My eyes moved towards the closed seafoam-colored curtain, which blocked the entrance to my hospital room. I looked down and saw two pairs of shoes—an old brown scuffed up pair and high heels (you know, the fancy kind with the red bottoms, that scream, ‘We’re expensive!’). I knew it was Eric and Michelle, and I watched Dad pull back the curtain to let them in.

They both were silent. Michelle stood tall in a beautifully tight white floral dress featuring a red sweater over it. And there, her boyfriend, my brother, Eric was, wearing his UW-Madison sweatshirt, a pair of slacks, and his scuffed up brown shoes.

I followed after my brother to UW-Madison, where I met some of my best friends. Unlike Eric, I hadn’t become a teacher, but I followed with a cool degree in dance. I’m a fantastic dancer.

As my eyes landed on my leg, my heart skipped a beat. I was a fantastic dancer.

Say something. I wished they would talk. The staring at me with sad eyes was growing to be too much. So I opened my mouth to speak and was graced with a mouthful of air and emptied words. I tried again, and sounds came out. But the actual words were what slapped me and made my eyes follow after my mom. A never-ending flow of tears poured from me as I smiled to my calm, loving father. “Did someone cancel the rehearsal dinner?”

In three days, five hours, and twenty-two minutes, I would have been walking down the aisle in my white dress inside the beautiful St. Peter’s Church. I would have been beaming with a type of joy that can’t be expressed in words, but only in a feeling. It would have been a warm feeling of knowing that, once I reached the end of the aisle, Derrick would be there.

I would have been marrying my middle school sweetheart and starting a new chapter. We would move out to New York— him to pursue his singing career and I would be pursuing dance. I would go for my Master’s degree if I were lucky, or I would waitress tables (something I have done at Mr. Fred’s Diner off Brady Street since I was sixteen). Derrick would probably be discovered before me because he was talented beyond his years, and I would gladly become his trophy wife and the backup dancer in his music videos. Classy!

But I made a mistake.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Mom said over and over again. But I knew better.

At the end of the school year, I was always overjoyed when Derrick picked me up. I was saying goodbye to my best friend, Ladasha, who was pretty much the best dancer I’d ever seen. Madison had been the third college she had tried out in the past three years. I don’t know why but the first day I met her we clicked. The Caucasian small town girl in me was so amused by the African-American city girl in her. She would make me laugh at the stupidest things in the world, but some days she’d glance at herself in a mirror and burst out crying. I never knew why. I never asked…I just hugged her.

It was tough saying goodbye because she was on her way to New York City. “To make my dreams come true,” she smirked. Stating how there was something in her heart calling out to her. So before she could finish her degree, she had to follow the voice. I had no clue what the heck she was talking about, but I hugged her tight and promised to stay in touch.

It was always a treat when I’d see him pulling up to my building in his green pick-up truck. Derrick wouldn’t complain once as he helped me load my past year’s dorm items into the truck. When it was all loaded up each year, I would make the drive back home. As a ‘thank you’ for him helping me. It was around four-thirty in the afternoon when we got to the freeway and blasted the newest CD he had recorded.

I hadn’t even seen the car’s tire explode in front of me before it was too late to hit my brakes. I didn’t even remember crying out in pain as my body slammed against the steering wheel. I didn’t know the truck had flipped and was slammed from behind with three other cars piling up. I didn’t have time to fully grasp what had happened.

But I had tasted it—the salty sweet mix of my blood dripping into my mouth as I sat in the car. It’d taken a moment for me to realize I was upside down. I tasted the coppery sensation that infested my tongue with its disgusting flavors. My eyes were filled with tears mixing with the deep red liquids as I screamed out in angst. My left leg was abusively tucked in between the door and driver’s seat.

None of that mattered the moment my eyes shifted to Derrick’s seat. His hazelnut eyes shot open and pierced my soul by saying the last word he would ever say to me— or anyone for that matter.

“Andie…”

In three days, I would be pushed down the aisle in a wheel chair, in my black dress, inside the beautiful St. Peter’s Church. I would be suffocating from a misery that can’t be expressed in words, but only in a feeling. It would be a cold feeling of knowing that, once I reached the end of the aisle, Derrick would be there.

In three days I would be saying goodbye to the only love I have ever known. Three days, five hours, and twenty-two minutes.

But who’s counting?

SITTING IN A metal chair that my dad pushed me around in was annoying. My family and I waited outside the church as all of the townspeople gathered around to say they were sorry. I heard some of the gossiping old ladies whisper there might have been alcohol involved. I didn’t even have the strength to roll my eyes. Michelle’s best friend, Rachel McLean, approached me. Her eyes were heavy with tears as she shook her head back and forth. We were never really close, but she looked as if she were as broken as I was.

“Andrea…” she whispered. I waited for her to get her thought out, but she kept crying, saying she was so sorry, over and over again. My brother came over and walked Rachel away. I was thankful for that. I couldn’t watch anyone else fall apart.

Everyone disappeared, traveling in a single-file car line in the direction of the graveyard. I couldn’t stop tugging on my black lace dress. My leg itched so much in that damn cast, but I didn’t complain. Mom didn’t complain either when she dressed me. It was a new chore for her, but she never let it appear that way. I was thankful for that, too.

I stared at the church. My wedding church. Mom looked at me with the gentlest eyes and bent down so she was closer, seeing how I was so low. “Andrea, we should get going. It’s been a long day. And if you don’t want to stop by the graveyard, we should still stop by Derrick’s parent’s house…”

I could feel Daddy’s hand on my shoulder. I wasn’t sure how long it had been there, but I wasn’t in a hurry to have it removed. Eric was there too with Michelle, who looked awful. She never really felt comfortable in uneasy situations. Who could blame her? The smile always plastered upon her was erased that day. As I looked around, I realized everyone’s smiles were gone.

Eric didn’t know what to say to me. What could he say? There were no words that could make any of this better. Stupid tears kept falling. There were so many times I didn’t even know I was crying. Eric bent down and wiped my eyes.

“It’s all right, Andie.”

“Don’t call me that,” I whispered as I smiled brightly towards them all, “Listen. Really. You can all stop looking at me as if I’m broken. I’m not. People die.” I couldn’t stop giggling.

“Grammy Tammy died and you guys didn’t throw a fit. So why should we be freaked out now that my twenty-two year old fiancé is being buried into a deep hole in the ground as we speak? You know what’s shitty?” I watched as my mother’s eyes widened. I never cursed in front of my parents, and I could tell it was a surprise to her ears. Especially in front of the church. “Sorry, Mom…you know what’s crappy? Derrick didn’t even like cemeteries. He hated them. He wanted to donate his organs and be cremated.”

The way everyone remained silent as they watched the first of my many breakdowns was pretty amusing. I continued. “And I mean, how did you all not know that? He wrote a song about it. ‘Windy Sunday’. I’m sure you didn’t listen to it though. But he talked about how cemeteries were a waste of perfectly good space and how he wanted to float away into the winds. Why didn’t anyone say, ‘Hey, Andrea, do you know how Derrick wanted to be handled after you killed him?’ Why didn’t anyone ask me, Daddy?”

I looked at my dad, whose eyes were filling with emotion. “Why didn’t anyone ask? Because I wasn’t his wife? Because I had no say in how to bury my dead fiancé’s body?”

I couldn’t speak anymore. I sobbed into my brother’s arms. I was surrounded by love, but I’d never felt so alone.

I SAT IN my old bedroom and listened to Mom and Daddy send away the guests who’d showed up to look at me with their pity eyes. I hadn’t cried since the funeral, and that was a few weeks ago. Mom thought I should see a therapist or something. She said I wasn’t dealing with my feelings in the right way. Who knew there was a wrong way to feel?

The engagement ring on my left hand remained in place, glimmering from the light shining through the window. I shut the curtains. The ring didn’t deserve to shimmer in such a perfect way anymore; the meaning behind it was now void. While I was in my college dorm, I practiced my wedding vows in the mirror, wanting to perfect them. What a waste of time. I moved the ring up and down my finger as I stared at the white, zipped-up bag hanging on the top of my closet door. My wedding dress was inside it. I couldn’t confront it yet. I was almost certain I could never deal with that.

Daddy stood in the doorway, his soft eyes smiling towards me. “What you thinking about?”

I shrugged my shoulders. The answer was so obvious that I was surprised he asked. “Derrick.”

He walked to my window, pulling open the curtains. Dangit, Dad. As we looked out the window, we saw more people walking up to our house with those stupid gloomy faces they had grown accustomed to delivering my way. The problem with living in a small town was that it was a small town. One stoplight in the middle of ‘downtown’ by the bakery. A themed Christmas party every year. Fred’s Diner. A small town, filled with small-minded people. And the accident was the biggest story since Peter Ericks stole the school’s history books because he said they were filled with the devil’s teachings. That was in 1993.