Steven James - The Queen

“You can’t blame yourself.” I saw his hand tighten around the bottle. “It was an accident. You swerved to miss that-”

“You don’t understand.”

“No, I do understand. You-”

“There was no deer that night.”

“What?”

He shifted his weight. “There was no deer.”

“The ice? Is that what you’re-”

All at once he turned from me and launched the beer bottle across the garage. It spun wickedly through the air, leaving a spray of suds in its wake until it smacked into the wall, sending an explosion of beer and glass splattering across the concrete.

The random movement above us in the living room stopped, and a moment later I heard purposeful footfalls moving across the room toward the stairs that led to the garage.

“I had too much to drink.” Sean was staring in the general direction of the shattered beer bottle, but he seemed to be looking beyond it to another place. “I had… I shouldn’t have been drinking.”

Footsteps on the stairs.

“You just had two. That’s not-”

“It was more than two. It was a lot more than two.”

Every time he reiterated his guilt, the words struck me harder. In many states there’s no statute of limitations on reckless vehicular homicide. If he really had been drunk that night, he could be The door to the stairs swung open, and Amber appeared. She peered at the foamy trail of beer extending the length of the garage, saw the smashed bottle, then fixed her gaze on Sean. Rather than asking what happened, she just shook her head slowly and then turned toward the stairs again.

“Wait,” he called.

“No. I’m tired of your-”

“Amber, just give me-”

“No!” There was razor wire in her voice and I couldn’t help but think of what she’d told me last night about her and Sean having their ups and downs. I could see this quickly moving into a major down.

“Don’t walk away from me when I’m talking to you.” Sean started after her, and I followed to see if I could defuse things before they spiraled off any further in the wrong direction.

“It was my fault, Amber,” I said, entering the living room. “I brought up something that-”

“No, Pat.” She was standing across the room from Sean and me, fiercely rooted beside Lien-hua. “You didn’t lose your temper. Sean did. You didn’t throw a beer bottle against the wall. Sean did. And this was not the first time.”

“Okay, but the reason he was angry was-”

“Do you know what it’s like being afraid of the person you’re supposed to feel safest being around?” The words blistered through the air, and no one moved. Immediately, I knew that this was not the right time for Amber to be confronting Sean like this, not when he was already so upset thinking about his culpability in Mrs. Everson’s death.

Still, the idea that Amber feared for her safety around my brother struck me deeply.

That’s why she’s leaving him. That’s why “You’re afraid of me?” Sean asked her. “Since when are you afraid of me?”

“You’ll have to forgive us,” Amber said to Lien-hua. There was a tremor in her voice. “Sean and I… we’ve had some… rough times. Lately.”

Sean repeated more forcefully, “Since when are you afraid of me?”

There was no hesitation in her reply, no holding back: “Since drinking became more important to you than spending time with me.” Even though her words were on fire, her eyes were beginning to glisten.

“Oh. Really.”

“Listen-” I began.

Amber looked at me. “He needs to know.”

No, please don’t…

“I need to know what?” Sean exclaimed.

“Back when you and I were engaged, when I first met Patrick. We-”

Lien-hua put an arm out toward Amber. “Maybe we can find a better time to-”

“We were in love,” Amber said softly but firmly. “We fell in love.”

Oh, not good, not good at all.

Lien-hua lowered her arm.

“What?” Sean looked from me to Amber to me. “What do you mean you fell in love?”

“It’s not what you think, Sean,” I said.

“Really?” He glared at me. “Then why did my wife just say the two of you were in love?”

“We talked,” Amber tried to explain. “But it was never-”

Ignoring her, Sean fired another question at me. “Did you sleep with her, Pat?”

“No.”

“What then?”

“We talked and-”

“Talked. You talked. Well, were you in bed while you were talking? Were you holding her, hugging her, kissing her? Did-”

“That’s enough,” Lien-hua stepped in. “Let’s just-”

“We did,” I confessed to Sean. “Kiss. Twice. Yes. While you were engaged.”

“You son of a-”

My phone rang.

“We never slept together,” Amber reiterated.

“I’m speaking to Pat,” he said gruffly.

For the moment I ignored the phone and came to her defense. “Don’t take it out on her.” Lien-hua gave me a cautionary look: Standing up for Amber at a time like this is not going to help things!

I added, “I take full responsibility for what happened.”

“Yeah? And what does that mean, exactly? Full responsibility?”

The cell buzzed again. “This probably isn’t the best time to talk about this.” I drew the phone out of my pocket, and the caller ID told me the number belonged to Hank Burlman.

Burlman? Did they find Kayla?

Sean came closer until he was within arm’s reach. His eyes were narrow, his jaw set.

Amber pleaded, “Please-”

“Quiet!” he hollered.

“I said”-my voice was firm, resolute-“don’t take it out on her.” Regardless of whether or not it was wise to intervene, I was not going to let him yell at Amber.

Return the call in a minute. Settle things here first.

I silenced the phone and placed it on the end table.

“Guys,” Lien-hua said authoritatively. “Just, everybody, take a breath and calm down.”

But things were not just going to calm down. When men get jacked up like this, they don’t just decide the issue wasn’t such a big deal after all, give each other a big hug, and sit down to a cup of tea. Something has to happen.

And it did.

Sean shoved me, not hard enough to send me flying, but assertively enough to let me know he was not joking around.

“See, this is the reason!” Amber shouted. “How you lose your-”

That stopped him. “The reason? The reason you and my brother were-”

“No! The reason we can’t make things work, you and me!” By now she wasn’t even trying to hold back her tears. “Why I can’t stay with you anymore!”

“You’re leaving?” His eyes shifted toward me. “To what? To be with Pat?”

“No,” I said.

Lien-hua stepped forward, valiantly, one last time. “If we could all-”

Sean lunged at me, two hands against my chest, thudding me into the wall. With my injured ankle it was a struggle to keep from toppling to the floor. “We broke things off,” I said, “before they went too-”

“Kissing her wasn’t going too far?”

“No, you’re right, it-”

“Maybe you wouldn’t mind if Lien-hua and I took a little time to-”

I positioned myself in front of him. “That’s enough.”

“Stop it!” Amber implored. “Both of you!”

Sean clenched his hands into fists, and I braced myself. This was something he needed to do, and, honestly, I felt like I deserved it. I could have ducked, could have blocked the punch or stepped aside, but I didn’t. I just said, “I’m sorry that things-”

Then it came, fierce and hard, a haymaker to the jaw. The force of impact whipped me around, and I slammed into the wall. A sailboat painting a couple feet away crashed to the floor corner-first and sent a shower of glass shards spraying across the carpet.