The Crash

by Freida McFadden

I’ve never killed anyone before. I’m not a murderer. I’m a good person. I don’t lie. I don’t cheat. I don’t steal. I hardly ever even raise my voice. There are very few things I’ve done in my life that I’m ashamed of. Yet here I am.

Soon, I’m going to be rich beyond my wildest dreams. And it’s all because of the baby growing inside me.

A flash of guilt passes over his thin face, but I don’t know why. It’s not Jackson’s responsibility to babysit me during this pregnancy. It’s nice of him to carry my groceries, but my baby and I are not his problem. And very soon—after the papers are signed—I’ll likely never see him again.

Mrs. Walden’s eyes drop to my belly, protruding below my thrift-store black-and-green blouse with the empire waist. It has ruffles around the collar, and it’s so tacky I could cry, but at the time I bought it, I was in no position to drop a bunch of cash on clothing I would need for only four or five months. Anyway, Mrs. Walden isn’t judging me on my cheap, ugly shirt. She’s judging me because I am twenty-three years old, eight months pregnant, and unmarried. But honestly, it’s none of her damn business.

Every woman has her own weird pregnancy cravings. Mine is tuna fish. Ever since my second trimester started and the nausea went away, I have been craving tuna. I can’t eat as much as I want due to the mercury content, but if I could, I would eat tuna for every meal, including breakfast. As a result, I have informally named my fetus Little Tuna.

Despite the fact that I didn’t recall a wedding band on his finger that night, Simon Lamar was very much married. Not only was he married, but he had two little ones of his own, and he had absolutely no interest in any illegitimate children. Nor did he want his beloved wife of ten years to discover his infidelity—or the press, for that matter.

However, he had Jackson reach out to make me a very intriguing offer. A boatload of money—enough to support me and our child and then some. I wouldn’t have to worry about rent, about childcare, or even about college tuition for my daughter. Simon would pay for all of that. And all I would have to do was sign a nondisclosure agreement, promising that nobody besides Simon and me (and Jackson) would know he was the father of my child. I said yes. What else could I do? I had to do it. Simon was offering to secure my future and Tuna’s for life. And as a single mother-to-be, I would have been stupid to say no.

Maybe Polly is telling the truth about everything. Maybe the plows are on their way and I’ll get to the hospital tomorrow, and they will make this right. Modern medicine is an incredible thing. And I can still feel Tuna moving, so she must be fine. Tomorrow morning, I will go straight to the hospital. After all, Hank can’t keep me here forever. Can he? I lift my face to look up at Polly’s eyes, staring down at me. Her eyes are bright green, but in the dim overhead light, they look much darker. And a sudden terrible certainty goes through my head: I’m going to die here.

“If you light a candle before you chop onions, it burns off the toxins so your eyes don’t water.”

I don’t think the ghost of my mother is floating around the basement. I haven’t completely lost my mind. But I do feel her presence every time I walk by the basement door. And when I press my fingers against it, I swear I can feel her fingertips touch mine. But that’s the extent of my spiritual belief. I don’t hold séances. I don’t attempt to communicate with her spirit in any way. But I do keep the basement door closed, because I feel like that might keep her with us longer. I miss her an awful lot. I love Hank, but there is nobody like your mother.

My husband is not a violent man by nature, but that rule doesn’t apply when it comes to protecting me. When we were married barely a year, he smashed a man’s nose at a bar for getting fresh with me, and he ended up spending two months in prison for assault. It was a miserable two months for him—something he’s not eager to ever repeat—but he still means business right now. He would still break every bone in Mitch’s body if he did anything to truly hurt me.

“But he’s hurting her!” Tears leap into my eyes at the thought of what he does to that little girl. What kind of justice is there in the world if a man like that has a beautiful, wonderful daughter who he doesn’t even care about? “He’s hurting her, and we’re not even going to do anything about it?”

Hank holds out his arms, and I fall into his lap, wrapping my arms around his thick neck. Hank means well. He’s the best man I’ve ever met—there’s nobody better. And he would have been a great father. It’s all my fault he’ll never get to experience that.

Don’t worry, Polly, she said to me. Someday, your family will be complete. She knew about my infertility problems, of course. Aside from Hank, she was the only person who knew all the sordid details. But unlike Hank, she believed that someday, I would get my baby. Just shows she didn’t know everything.

I’m an old hat at plastering a smile on my face and pretending to be delighted about someone else having a baby, but it gets harder every time. One of these days, I will open my mouth to congratulate someone on their baby, and I will simply be mute.

I flinch at the memory of her complaint about being “ridiculously fertile.” Every time a woman complains to me about how fertile she is, a blood vessel in my temple comes closer to popping. Poor me—I’m too fertile, I’ve got too much money in the bank, and every time I eat a slice of chocolate cake, I lose two pounds! Lucky me—I don’t have a problem with being too fertile. In fact, Hank and I have spent every penny we had to have a child, and what do we have to show for it? Absolutely nothing.

Unfortunately, The Incident meant there would be no family—we had to withdraw our name from the waiting list for adoptions and foster children. We would never become parents. We don’t need a child, Polly, Hank kept telling me. We’ve got each other.

I’m glad that it’s just the two of us.” I don’t answer him this time. I won’t lie to him. I’m not glad that it’s just the two of us. I will never be happy with our situation the way he apparently can be. But that’s okay. Because I made up my mind tonight. Very soon, we will have a child of our own. We will finally get to use that teddy bear with the heart that I’ve had stuffed in the pantry all these years. He just doesn’t know it yet. My mother was right after all. Very soon, our family will be complete.

“Three days.” Hank holds up three fingers, one of which contains his gold wedding band. “Three days, and she either goes home or to the hospital. I mean it, Polly.” “Of course.” Except in three days, nothing will have changed. Hank still won’t want to end up in prison. Tegan will still be an irresponsible child who doesn’t deserve to raise a beautiful daughter. And I’ll still be barren. In three days, I’ll make Hank see reason. I’m sure of it.

When I get down to the basement, the lights are out, but Tegan’s eyes are cracked open. For one terrifying second, I’m scared she’s dead. That she passed away during the night and now I’m going to have to cut her open to get the baby out and then dispose of her dead body. But then she moves, and I let out a sigh of relief.

“If you give me enough time, I can talk her into it. She and I can come to an understanding. We can help her.” “Polly, she stabbed you with a fork today. She’s not giving you her baby.”

I’ve got to be strategic about this. I’ve been thinking about it, and the best thing to do would be to break her right kneecap. The kneecap is a delicate bone, and the hammer will shatter it easily—there’s a reason mobsters are infamous for that sort of thing. And once it’s broken, she will have difficulty moving her right leg. Walking on it will be nearly impossible, especially if she doesn’t have her left leg to support her. With two broken legs, Tegan will truly be at our mercy. I have to do this. It seems cruel, I admit, but I don’t have a choice.

“I love you, Polly.” Is that even true anymore? He used to love me. Before I lost my mind. Ever since then, he hasn’t looked at me the same way. He doesn’t look at me like I’m the most wonderful human being he’s ever met, that’s for sure. We stay together out of habit now. It was up to me to make our family complete, and I failed miserably.

I came here to kill Tegan Werner, to stop her from sending my husband to jail. But the truth is I never could have done it. I didn’t have it in me after all. So instead, I saved her life.

Someday, your family will be complete. I’ve spent so many years of my life focusing on the child I wanted so badly. But Hank is my family, and he’s given me more love than I would have gotten from a dozen kids. It took almost losing everything to realize how blessed I am. A year after her death, I finally see the wisdom in my mother’s words. I’ve got Hank and he’s got me, and our family is complete. And now we’re going home together to have a nice quiet night, just the two of us.

“I can’t afford that.” “Yes, you can,” he says firmly. “I talked with Simon, and he has signed papers to pay you child support starting immediately.” My mouth falls open. “How did you get him to do that?” One corner of his lips quirks up. “I am very persuasive. Meaning I have access to a lot of dirt about him that would make his case even worse. And it’s already bad enough.”

He was angry that I threw him into the snow. And if I walked away, he was going to take it out on his daughter. If I came back later that night, she might be dead. I had never killed anyone before, but I didn’t even think about what I did next. I shoved Mitch’s face back into the snow, ignoring his muffled shouts and protests as he struggled for air. He was a big, strong guy but not bigger and stronger than me. There was a point when I could have stopped and let him go—no major harm done—but I wasn’t about to let him go back to Sadie after I had pissed him off like that. After a minute or two, he stopped struggling so much. A couple of minutes after that, he wasn’t moving at all.

She remembers—it’s all over her face. I wonder if she’s mad at me for what I did. She knows I killed him. She knows I’m the one responsible for taking her father away from her. She must hate me, at least on some level. Wouldn’t she have to? She doesn’t understand why I did it. She doesn’t understand what I felt when I saw that man was beating up on a defenseless little girl. “I don’t know what you mean,” she finally says. She tilts her chin up to me. “You’re my dad, Hank.” I stare back at her in the dim light of her bedroom. “That’s right,” I say. “I am.” I reach out and take her tiny hand in mine as we watch the snowflakes falling from the sky. She might not have forgotten, but she understands. My daughter will never tell a soul what I did for her. We will both keep this secret.