But that was all he could do.
He had never come across a story he couldn’t report. It was a commandment in the newspaper world: you printed the news, no matter what. You printed the story about the governor’s sleeping with prostitutes or the senator’s love child, even when the senator had been your college roommate or the governor was your wife’s uncle. Jordan’s grandfather’s brother-in-law had stolen a car and driven it into Gibbs Pond-a relative misdemeanor that was nevertheless the leading news story that week in 1930-and Jordan’s grandfather had put it on the front page, complete with his brother-in-law’s mug shot.
Jordan took a deep breath. He reminded himself that he didn’t have any actual information other than that Penelope Alistair, age seventeen, was dead, and Hobson Alistair, also age seventeen, was at Mass General in a coma. There had been a car accident; Penny had been driving a Jeep registered to Jordan himself. It was the Jeep that Jordan had given to Jake on his seventeenth birthday-because Jake had turned out to be a great kid, despite some pretty punishing circumstances.
Here were the other things that Jordan knew:
– Zoe had slapped him across the face in public, in the hospital waiting room.
– Zoe was not taking his calls.
– Jake Randolph had a bruised right knee and a cut across the top of his left cheek but was otherwise fine.
– Demeter Castle didn’t have a scratch on her but was suffering from shock.
– A nearly empty bottle of Jim Beam had been found in Demeter Castle’s handbag.
– Jake Randolph and Demeter Castle had been wearing seat belts. Penelope Alistair and Hobson Alistair had not been wearing seat belts.
– The airbags had deployed.
– Penelope Alistair had died of a broken neck. Nurses at the hospital had taken a blood sample for the tox screen, but the results had not yet been released.
– Nantucket Auto Body had hauled the Jeep up off the beach in the early hours of Sunday morning, and it was being kept, for now, in the back lot at the police station.
There were many more things that Jordan didn’t know. What had happened? Why had Penny been driving so fast? Jake claimed to have no idea, but Jordan sensed that his son was lying, or partially lying. He worried that Jake and Penny had had a fight, or that Jake had perhaps even broken up with her. But Jake was as enamored with Penny as Jordan could imagine any seventeen-year-old kid’s being. Had Jordan been flirting with another girl? Had he had five or six beers and done something stupid? He said no, he told Jordan that everything had been fine one minute, and then the next minute, not.
Jordan had been forced to wake Ava up out of a deep sleep to tell her that there’d been an accident and he was going to the hospital. Ava had opted to let him go alone, once she knew that Jake was okay. He said he’d call her with any news, but he was pretty certain she’d succumb to the Ambien in her bloodstream and fall back to sleep. And so he didn’t call. When he got back to the house at five-thirty, his cheek burning from Zoe’s slap, Ava was still asleep, and Jake was in his room bawling like a baby. Jordan was torn between going to console his son and telling his wife about the awful thing that had happened.
He had studied Ava at that moment-her eye-quilt covering the upper half of her face and mussing her hair, her mouth gaping open in delirious sleep-and hated her. And he hated himself. He knew, somehow, that this was all his fault.
He shook Ava’s shoulder gently until she woke and sat up and removed her eye-quilt. She was disoriented and no doubt more than a little scared. Jordan hadn’t set foot in that room in years until earlier that night.
She said, “What is it?”
He said, “Penny’s dead, and Hobby is in a coma. They flew him to Boston.”
Ava’s face remained as still and calm as a mask. Jordan wanted to throttle her. Could she not hear her son wailing?
She pulled off her eye-quilt, then stared at it in her hands. Tears streamed down her face, and a sob escaped her. Jordan knew he should reach out and comfort his wife, but she hadn’t voluntarily accepted a touch from him in a very long time, so instead he handed her a tissue. She blotted it against each eye, as if cleaning a spill off the counter. Her hoarse sobs continued. “Oh God,” she said. “Poor Zoe.” Jordan took an indecent amount of interest in watching Ava cry. Maybe he was in shock. But then he realized he was simply amazed: for the first time in years, Ava was crying for someone other than herself.
Three days later, the deadline for the paper loomed. Jordan sat in his office with the door closed, which was highly unusual. Normally he sat at his desk out on the floor, where he could see and hear everything that was going on. He had given his staff, and especially his assistant, Emily, strict orders not to say anything about the accident beyond confirming that there had been one fatality and the matter was still under investigation.
Hobby was in a coma, his condition unchanged. Lynne Castle called Jordan’s cell phone every day with an update. Every day Jordan asked, “How’s Zoe?” And Lynne said, “About how you’d expect. She really only talks to Al.” It had, perversely, made Jordan feel better to know that Lynne Castle was in exile from Zoe’s confidences, too.
Lynne addressed the unspoken question by saying, “I’m sure she feels like she hates us right now, because our children are safe.”
“Is that why?” Jordan said.
He had to write a story; he couldn’t just pretend the accident had never happened. He thought about handing off the assignment to Lorna Dobbs, who was his best news writer, and just doing the final edit on it. He wanted to write the article himself, but how could he? Better to give it one degree of separation. He called Lorna into his office.
Lorna Dobbs wasn’t an attractive woman-she had thinning hair and a pale, pinched face-but she was smart and, more important, perceptive. She could have had a second career as a detective or a psychotherapist.
Jordan said, “I want you to write a story about the accident. Call the Chief and get what you can.”
She nodded slowly. “Okay.”
“It’s sensitive,” he said. “Obviously.”
“Obviously,” Lorna repeated. “Am I only covering the accident, or are we doing a tribute to the life of the girl?”
A tribute to Penny: there would be dozens of people who would want to be quoted, and a list of her accomplishments would have to be compiled, and they would need photos. They had some pictures on file, he knew, including the brand-new one of her singing the National Anthem at graduation. Hours before her death. But could he reasonably print a piece of this nature without Zoe’s input?
“Just the accident,” Jordan said. “Let’s hold off on the tribute until…”
“Until we know about the boy?”
“Yes.”
“Should I call Mass General to ask if they can give me any more details about his status?” Lorna asked.
“Yes,” Jordan said. “But tread lightly, please.”
“Of course,” Lorna said.
Lorna emailed the story to him two hours later. Jordan saw it hit his inbox and immediately got a headache. There had been other grisly news moments in his career-certain Town Meetings, the cocaine bust of ’97, the murder of a girl by her lover-but this was by far the worst.
He clicked on the article.
Car Crash on Cisco Beach Claims Life of Nantucket Student
At approximately 12:50 a.m. on Sunday, June 17, a fatal car accident occurred at the end of Hummock Pond Road. The car, a 2009 four-door Jeep Sahara driven by Nantucket High School junior Penelope Alistair, 17, crashed onto the sand at Cisco Beach after traveling at speeds in excess of 80 m.p.h. The car is registered to Nantucket Standard Editor-in-Chief Jordan Randolph and was primarily used by Mr. Randolph’s son, Jacob Randolph, 17, who was in the passenger seat at the time of the accident but who was unhurt. Also in the car were Miss Alistair’s twin brother, Hobson Alistair, 17, and Demeter Castle, 17. Miss Castle was unhurt, police officials said, but Hobson Alistair was flown in a Medflight helicopter to Mass General for the treatment of multiple broken bones and severe head trauma that has left the Nantucket High School student in a coma.