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Eventually, Tony said he wanted to marry her, that if she met him at the mall some Saturday, they could drive up to Elkton, get married at the little chapel where people from New York got married, because there was no waiting period, no blood tests required. No, she said. He couldn’t be serious. “I am, I will. You’re so pretty, Su
The next time she saw him, the week of March 23, she said yes, she would meet him, and now, a mere six days later, she was on another bus, heading to see him. She was going to go on her honeymoon tonight. She shivered a bit, thinking about that. They had never been able to do more than kiss, and only a little, but it had made her insides flip. Tony’s father knew his schedule too well, questioned him closely if he returned home late, sniffed the interior of the bus and asked if he’d been smoking. It was fu
“But we won’t live with them, after we’re married,” he said. “She won’t expect that. We’ll get an apartment in town, or maybe over to York.”
“Like the Peppermint Patty?”
“Like the Peppermint Patty.”
The wheels on the bus went round and round.
AND THEN HEATHER had to go and ruin everything, following Su
Only there was no wedding when they got to Elkton. The courthouse was closed, so they couldn’t get a marriage license. Tony pretended to be surprised, but he had made a reservation at a motel down in Aberdeen. Why would you call ahead for a motel, but not check on whether the courthouse was open? Su
The diner was called the New Ideal, and it was the old-fashioned kind her father loved best, where everything was made from scratch. Burgers like that took longer, but they were worth it. In fact, diners were the only place her father ever ate burgers. Even a health nut, he said, had to let loose every now and then. He had made them chocolate-chip pancakes that morning, and she hadn’t finished hers. She wished she had. She wished she could go back to this morning, but that was impossible. Still, she could go home. She would go back to the room, ask Tony to take them home, come up with a lie and persuade Heather to back her up, bribing her with her own money.
She paid for the cheeseburgers, never guessing that her life had ended while she waited in the New Ideal Diner.
WHEN SUNNY RETURNED to the room, Heather was lying on the floor, not moving. An accident, Tony said. She was jumping on the bed making all this noise and I told her to stop, tried to grab her arm, and she fell.
“We have to call a doctor or take her to a hospital. Maybe she’s not really dead.” Hopeless words, said over the body of a clearly dead Heather, the back of her head as collapsed as a pumpkin the day after Halloween, blood seeping into a towel beneath her once-blond hair. Why had he put a towel beneath her head? And how do you hit your head so hard falling off a bed? But those were questions Su
“No,” Tony said. “She’s dead. We should call my dad. He’ll know what to do.”
STAN DUNHAM WAS far kinder than the tyrant described by his son over those months of confessional talks on the bus. He did not yell, or scream, or say, as Su
“This is the way I see it,” he said, sitting on the motel double bed, his hands on his knees. “We have lost one life, and we can’t get it back. If we call the authorities, my son will be arrested and charged. No one will believe it was an accident. And Su
“But I didn’t…” she protested. “I wasn’t-”
He held up a hand, and Su
She bowed her head, out of arguments.
“But here’s how I see it, Su
With that he lifted Heather as any father might pick up a sleeping child, cradling her broken head and arranging her over his shoulder, then carrying her out to his car, telling Su