Linwood Barclay: The Accident

It was an accident. A bad one. Two cars. So badly mangled it was difficult to tell what they were or what might have happened. Closer to me was a car that appeared to be a station wagon, and the other one, a sedan of some kind, was off to the side. It looked as though the wagon had been broadsided by the sedan.

Sheila drove a wagon.

Kelly was still sound asleep, and I didn’t want to wake her. I got out of the truck, closed the door without slamming it, and approached the ramp. There were three police cars at the scene, a couple of tow trucks and a fire engine.

As I got closer, I was able to get a better look at the cars involved in the accident. I began to feel shaky. I glanced back at my truck, made sure I could see Kelly in the passenger window.

Before I could take another step, however, a police officer stood in my way.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “You have to stay back.”

“What kind of car is that?” I asked.

“Sir, please-”

“What kind of car? The wagon, the closest car.”

“A Subaru,” he said.

“Plate,” I said.

“I’m sorry, sir?”

“I need to see the plate.”

“Do you think you know whose car this is?” the cop asked.

“Let me see the plate.”

He allowed me to approach, took me to a vantage point that allowed me to see the back of the wagon. The license plate was clearly visible.

I recognized the combination of numbers and letters.

“Oh Jesus,” I said, feeling weak.

“Sir?”

“This is my wife’s car.”

“What’s your name, sir?”

“Glen Garber. This car, it’s my wife’s car. That’s her plate. Oh my God.”

The cop took a step closer to me.

“Is she okay?” I asked, my entire body feeling as though I were holding on to a low-voltage live wire. “Which hospital have they taken her to? Do you know? Can you find out? I have to go there. I have to get there right now.”

“Mr. Garber-” the cop said.

“Milford Hospital?” I said. “No, wait, Bridgeport Hospital is closer.” I turned to run back to the truck.

“Mr. Garber, your wife hasn’t been taken to the hospital.”

I stopped. “What?”

“She’s still in the car. I’m afraid that-”

“What are you saying?”

I looked at the mangled remains of the Subaru. The cop had to be wrong. There were no paramedics there; none of the nearby firefighters were using the Jaws of Life to get to the driver.

I pushed past him, ran to the car, got right up to the caved-in driver’s side, looked through what was left of the door.

“Sheila,” I said. “Sheila, honey.”

The window glass had shattered into a million pieces the size of raisins. I began to brush them from her shoulder, pick them from her blood-matted hair. I kept saying her name over and over again.

“Sheila? Oh God, please, Sheila…”

“Mr. Garber.” The officer was standing right behind me. I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Please, sir, come with me.”

“You have to get her out,” I said. The smell of gasoline was wafting up my nostrils and I could hear something dripping.

“We’re going to do that, I promise you. Please, come with me.”

“She’s not dead. You have to-”

“Please, sir, I’m afraid she is. There were no vital signs.”

“No, you’re wrong.” I reached in and put my arm around her head. It nodded over to one side.

That was when I knew.

The cop put his hand firmly on my arm and said, “You have to move away from the car, sir. It’s not safe to stand here.” He pulled me forcibly away and I didn’t fight him. Half a dozen car lengths away, I had to stop, bend over, and put my hands on my knees.

“Are you okay, sir?”

Looking down at the pavement, I said, “My daughter’s in my truck. Can you see her? Is she asleep?”

“I can just see the top of her head, yes. Looks like she is.”

I took several shaky breaths, straightened back up. Said “Oh my God” probably ten times. The cop stood there, patiently, waiting for me to pull it together enough for him to ask me some questions.

“Your wife’s name is Sheila, sir? Sheila Garber?”

“That’s right.”

“Do you know what she was doing tonight? Where she was going?”

“She has a course tonight. Bridgeport Business College. She’s learning accounting and other things to help me in my business. What happened? What happened here? How did this happen? Who the hell was driving that other car? What did he do?”

The cop lowered his head. “Mr. Garber, this appears to have been an alcohol-related accident.”

“What? Drunk driving?”

“It would appear so, yes.”

Anger began to mix in with the shock and grief. “Who was driving that car? What stupid son of a bitch-”

“There were three people in the other car. One survived. A young boy in the back seat. His father and brother were the two fatalities.”

“My God, what kind of man gets behind the wheel drunk with his boys in the car and-”

“That’s not exactly how it looks, sir,” the cop said.

I stared at him, trying to figure out what he was getting at. Then it hit me. It wasn’t the father driving. It was one of the sons.

“One of his boys was driving drunk?”

“Mr. Garber, please. I need you to calm down for me. I need you to listen. It appears it was your wife who caused the accident.”

“What?”

“She’d driven up the ramp the wrong way, then just stopped her vehicle about halfway, parking it across the road, no lights visible. We think she may have fallen asleep.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“And then,” he said, “when the other car came off the highway, probably doing about sixty, he’d have been almost on your wife’s car before he saw it and could put on the brakes.”

“But the other driver, he was drunk, right?”

“You’re not getting me here, Mr. Garber. If you don’t mind my asking, sir, did your wife have a habit of drinking and driving? Usually, by the time someone actually gets into an accident, they’ve been taking chances for quite some-”

Sheila’s car burst into flames.

I’d lost track of just how long, exactly, I’d been standing there, staring into Sheila’s closet. Two minutes? Five? Ten?

I hadn’t poked my head in here much in the last two weeks. I’d been avoiding it. Right after her death, of course, I’d had to do some rooting around. The funeral home needed an outfit, even though the casket was going to be closed. They’d done the best they could with Sheila. The broken glass had torn into her like buckshot. And the subsequent explosion, even though it did not fully engulf the car’s interior before the firefighters doused the vehicle, had only made the undertaker’s job more challenging. They’d sculpted and molded Sheila into something that bore a remote resemblance to how she’d looked in life.

But I kept thinking about what it would do to Kelly, to see her mother that way at the service, looking only superficially like the woman she loved. And how everyone would be prompted to say how good she looked, what an amazing job the funeral home had done, which would only serve to remind us of what they’d had to work with.

We’ll go with a closed casket, I’d said.

The director said that was what they would do, then, but they still wanted me to provide an outfit.

And so I selected a dark blue suit jacket and matching skirt, underwear, shoes. Sheila had more than a few pairs, and I picked a medium-height pair of pumps. I’d had a pair with higher heels in my hands at one point, then put them back because Sheila had always found that pair uncomfortable.

When I was building her this walk-in closet by shaving a few feet off the end of our large bedroom, she’d said to me, “And just so we’re clear, this closet will be completely mine. Yours, that tiny, pitiful, phone-booth-sized thing over there, is all you’re ever going to need, and there’ll be no encroachment into my territory whatsoever.”