Val was almost asleep when Julie whispered, “Is it my fault?”
“Is what your fault?”
“All of it. David. His foot.”
There were a few possible answers, and Val chose carefully. “Some parts, maybe, but not the foot or the train. He made choices. Maybe we could have helped him deal better with whatever he’s dealing with if he’d been here, but I don’t think we know that for sure.”
“So you don’t blame me?”
“Not for this.”
• • •
She woke before Julie as she always did, but stayed in bed. No run today. Not because she heard rain on the window behind the drapes, but because she’d missed the simple pleasure of lying beside someone she loved and watching her sleep. She had to remind herself she was still angry, but then she wondered why she needed to hold on to that. Julie knew what she needed to fix; maybe that knowing meant Val could let go and see what happened next. She closed her eyes again and put an arm around Julie, and Julie nestled into her.
When she woke again, Julie was gone. It took Val a minute to remember what day of the week it was—Saturday, no alarm—and then everything came back. She heard raised voices from downstairs, and sighed, resigning herself to another round of family drama. They hadn’t even been able to maintain a day’s truce.
Except as she rounded the corner to the kitchen, she realized they weren’t shouting at each other. It was a shared anger.
“What’s going on?” Val asked, yawning.
Julie shoved her tablet into Val’s hands. “This.”
Val rubbed sleep from her eyes and focused. It was a news aggregation site. The clickbait headline was You’ll Never Guess Which Celebrity Jumped in Front of a Train This Week. She frowned, fully awake. “Do they think he did it on purpose?”
“Some imply that. Also, their definition of ‘celebrity’ is debatable,” said Sophie.
“There are more.” Julie took the tablet back and paged through her open tabs. “BNL Expresses Sympathy for Troubled Ex-Spokesperson. Ex-BNL Spokesperson Hit by Train Shines Light on the Dangers of Pilot Deactivation.”
Val looked from Sophie to Julie. “I don’t understand.”
“Yesterday there was a piece on a local news site saying Local Man Hit by Train,” Sophie said. “Some gossip outlet might have recognized his name, but it seems unlikely, since most people know him as ‘hey, you’re the guy from that ad.’ It seems really weird they’d make that connection.”
“Not to mention they know an awful lot. How did they know he wasn’t working there anymore?”
Val considered. “It probably only took one person connecting his name. If they called BNL for a statement thinking he still worked there, BNL would have said he didn’t. Maybe it all rolled from there, with others running with the story.”
“Okay, fine, but how did they know he didn’t have a Pilot anymore? He still had it when he left BNL,” said Julie.
“No, he didn’t,” said Sophie. “He’d had it turned off already, but the light was still on.”
Julie frowned. “You knew he’d had it turned off?”
“I went with him to do it. He was chicken and left the light. I’m not sure exactly when he lost his job, but I’m one hundred percent certain it was before he had the light turned off. He left it on to keep that stupid job.”
Val slumped into a chair, fighting the urge to walk out. “When did I get this oblivious, and when did we all start hiding things from each other? Pilots on and lights on and Pilots off and lights off and lost jobs and ten million secrets and I am so sick of all of it. You don’t need to tell me everything, but at some point somebody needs to tell me something.”
“I’m sorry.” Sophie put a hand on her shoulder. “I wasn’t hiding things on purpose. It wasn’t mine to tell.”
“I hid things on purpose that I definitely should have told you. It wasn’t right. I’m sorry, too.” Julie sounded sincere, and the apology was for the right thing. Driving David out was bad, but hiding it had been the part that had hurt Val more. If Julie recognized that, they had some hope.
Val reached for Julie’s hand and squeezed it. “Apology accepted.”
“Oh, thank God,” Julie said, and then they were kissing, and Val put everything else out of her mind.
“This is all very touching, Moms, and kinda gross, but let’s get back to the part where your son’s in the news. And, um, what’s the visitor policy at that hospital? If these rags know his name and what hospital he’s at, what’s to stop them from going to his room to get an interview while he’s loopy?”
Julie looked at her daughter with an expression of both horror and respect. “Oh no. You’re right.”
“There was a local news van reporting outside the hospital when we got there the other night, but they didn’t stop us,” said Val. “I didn’t even consider they were probably reporting on David. I was so worried I barely registered them.”
“I noticed, too, but I figured it was because of the hit-by-a-train part.”
“It probably was.” Sophie waved her phone. “I’m sure it started that way. They monitor police frequencies, so maybe they started out reporting someone was hit by a train, and then they followed the ambulance and reported from the hospital, and then got his name somehow, but I don’t think his name was as known as his face, so I don’t know how they got from there to the other stuff about him being a BNL spokesperson and especially not the stuff about him not having a Pilot any—”
Her mouth stayed open but she didn’t finish her sentence. She jumped to her feet, calling back over her shoulder, “I have to go. You should go make sure David isn’t telling
