Chapter 4 - Olivia’s Whisper
Olivia came into my hospital room the next afternoon.
She looked smaller than sixteen, wrapped in a hoodie Aunt Meredith had brought her, a temporary cast around her wrist, a white bandage crossing her forehead. She stood just inside the door and stared at the floor.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
I did not answer right away.
That made her cry.
Not dramatically. Quietly. Like she was trying not to ask me to comfort her, which was new.
“I didn’t know he would get like that,” she said. “I thought he’d just yell. I thought if he knew, he’d make you stay.”
My chest hurt in a place no scan could show.
“Why did you want me to stay?”
Her lips trembled.
“Because I was scared.”
“Of what?”
“Everything.” She wiped her face with the sleeve of her good arm. “Dad. The house. School. Bills. Not knowing what to do if you weren’t there.”
I looked at her then.
Really looked.
For years, I had believed Olivia was selfish because Dad made her selfish. But fear had lived in her too, just differently. She had been protected from responsibility so completely that responsibility looked like abandonment when it finally arrived.
“You could have told me you were scared.”
“I know.”
“But you told him.”
She nodded.
“And then the car smelled weird,” she whispered.
My breath caught.
“What?”
She looked toward the hallway.
“Before we left Aunt Meredith’s, Dad went under the hood. He said the engine light had been acting up. I didn’t think anything of it. Then in the car, after I told him about Boston, he got quiet. Really quiet.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“Olivia.”
“I’m not saying he crashed on purpose,” she said quickly, terrified by the thought even as she spoke it. “I’m saying he knew something was wrong with the car, and he drove anyway. Fast. Angry.”
Officer Ramirez had asked about the strange smell for a reason.
Later that day, he returned with a mechanic’s preliminary report. A damaged fuel line. Temporary tape. A repair so careless it could not have held under pressure. The car should not have been driven, not with two daughters inside.
“Was your father aware?” Aunt Meredith asked.
Officer Ramirez’s expression stayed careful.
“We have reason to believe he may have been.”
A receipt from an auto parts store had been found in Dad’s jacket.
Tape.
Sealant.
A cheap clamp.
Purchased that afternoon.
I felt sick.
Maybe he did not plan the crash.
Maybe he did not intend for anyone to be hurt.
But he had known the car was unsafe, patched it badly, and driven anyway because anger made him reckless and my life had never been valuable enough to slow him down.
Olivia sat beside my bed and cried into her sleeve.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
This time, I reached for her good hand.
Not because everything was forgiven.
Because she was sixteen.
Because Dad had made both of us into shapes that served him.
May you like
Because the difference between us was not that I loved less.
It was that I was finally leaving.
