CHAPTER ONE
Sunday
The grinding noise and vibration of the rumble strips under her passenger-side tires snapped Sunday to attention. Getting behind the wheel had been a bad idea. She tightened her grip at ten and two. Then she worked her eyes a bit, blinking and widening them, because a passing “Construction Ahead” sign briefly doubled. Her exit was coming up, just a few more minutes. She checked her speed and nudged the accelerator. Denny used to tell her the cops looked for cars going too slow, a sign of drunk driving.
She’d ordered an Uber, but the estimated time of arrival kept getting pushed back. Probably some Hollywood event going on, which always played havoc with the traffic. At some point she looked up from her phone to realize she’d been left alone with the bartender. That’s when she rushed out of there and decided to chance it.
It had been a last-minute invite that afternoon. Mia—or was it Maia?—another waitress who’d only been at the diner for a couple months, asked Sunday to come out for her birthday. She almost said no and went home. Like she did most nights. But if she went home she would open the email from Jackie and stare at the photo again, and that thought was too damn painful. She wanted to be anywhere other than her lonely apartment that night. So she’d gone to the annoying hipster bar with the LED ice cubes to attend a birthday party for a girl she barely knew.
She leaned forward in the driver’s seat and slowed her speed. This work zone was tricky. There were tight lines of orange barrels along both sides of the road, shifting lanes around in some random way. The lights on top of the barrels blurred and blended with the electric speed signs.
That bartender must have thought she was flirting with him because he’d been chatty, offered some cheesy compliment on her dimples. But she’d only been watching him pour her drinks, trying—and failing—to keep count. It was probably mixing alcohols that had put her over the edge. Denny would shake his head and call her an idiot. Her brother always said that was just asking for trouble.
Early in the night she’d had a get-to-know-you-better talk with Mia/Maia, and afterward Sunday had just wanted to quiet her mind for a while. Mia/Maia was turning twenty-four that day, soon to complete her graduate degree, and had recently gotten engaged. The diner job was just a stop-gap because her real life was about to start. Everything Sunday learned about the younger woman was a by-contrast commentary on her own life. If Jackie’s email had started her down Regret Road that morning, the conversation with Mia/Maia had sped up the trip.
When the world started to spin in a scary way, along with her stomach, she cursed herself again for drinking so much. What the hell had she been thinking—she knew better. She looked for a place to pull over but there was none. She didn’t know what the hell this road project was about, but her car was pinned in between the barrels, which seemed to be taking her through a maze. The swirl of lights and painted lines in the wrong places on the road only made it harder to thread the needle. She bumped up against one of the barrels on her right side and the car jerked back and forth a bit before she steadied the wheel.
All she had to do was make it home. Her exit was up ahead, though it was difficult to spot the turnoff among the sea of orange markers. She’d drink a gallon of water, down a couple ibuprofen, and head straight to bed. No detour to the laptop. No opening Jackie’s email again.
When a concrete barrier materialized before her out of thin air she slammed on the brake with both feet. She heard the roaring squeal of tires, felt the violent resistance of her old Toyota as the seat belt dug into her chest and shoulder. But she knew it was too late.
Another Denny-ism came to her: “You have fucked this up on a grand scale.”
Then she slammed into concrete and everything went black.
CHAPTER TWO
Denny
“You have fucked this up on a grand scale,” he told himself.
He was staring at the spreadsheets and statements that comprised the pub’s financials. No real purpose in doing that. Glaring at them some more with his hands shoved in his hair was not going to intimidate the numbers into changing from red to black.
The sun hadn’t risen yet. The only light came from the stained glass pendant chandelier hanging above the kitchen table, which was dimmed to a medium glow. He’d given up on sleep an hour before; he could only stare at the ceiling for so long. After making a pot of sludgy coffee—Theresa usually made the coffee and he hadn’t gotten it right since she left him four days ago—he decided to take another look at the ledger. See if he could finagle the loan payment that was months past due from some hidden reserve he’d overlooked. But as his mother used to say, You can’t get blood from a stone, son.
He jumped when his cell phone rang in the 4:26 A.M. silence and assumed it was Jackie. Middle-of-the-night calls from his younger brother were not unheard of, though Jackie only called him as a last resort, when he was out of options for a ride home and too far or too shit-faced to walk. Denny would never say no, but Jackie would have to sit through a gnarly lecture about growing the fuck up the whole drive home.
He grabbed the buzzing phone before it woke anyone else. “Yeah?”
When the crisp male voice on the other end asked if he was Mr. Dennis Brennan, his gut twisted. It wasn’t Jackie. But maybe it was another collect call from Westchester County Corrections informing him that Jackie had been arrested again. He sat up straighter while he confirmed his identity to the caller.
“Mr. Brennan, this is Officer Becker with the LAPD. I’m calling about Ms. Sunday Brennan. There’s a card in her wallet that identifies you as her emergency contact.”
A low ringing started in Denny’s ears. He didn’t have time to be relieved about Jackie. “Yeah.” He swallowed. “She’s my sister.”
“Mr. Brennan, your sister was in a car accident tonight. Looks like she’s gonna be okay, but she’s on her way to Cedars-Sinai.”
Denny took a breath. “What happened?”
“She hit a median barrier on the highway and flipped her car. Fortunately she was wearing her seat belt, and no one else was involved.”
“But she’s all right?”
“Appears so. She was conscious and talking at the scene. She was damn lucky.”
Flipped her car? Jesus. When was the last time he even talked to Sunday … Probably last Christmas when she called and they each took a quick turn saying hello to her. She only bothered to check in a few times a year.
“I don’t recognize this area code,” Becker said. “Are you in California?”
“No, I live in New York.” He glanced around the large, cluttered kitchen, laid his hand flat on the thick trestle table, as if to confirm where he was.
“Is there someone here in LA that can get to the hospital and check on her?”
They had no family out there. He didn’t know any of her friends, didn’t even know if she had a boyfriend. It’s not like she kept them informed. “I don’t really know much about her life out there. I’m not sure who can check on her.”
“Well, maybe you or another family member should get out here.”
Something sounding like judgment had crept into Becker’s voice. Denny was tempted to describe how much he had on his plate, what would be involved in making a sudden trip to the West Coast right now. For a sister who had all but disappeared from their lives five years ago, he might add. And there was no one else who could go. Jackie would have been the only realistic option, but he couldn’t violate his probation by leaving the state without prior approval.
“Mr. Brennan, you should know your sister was drinking heavily. We didn’t even need the BAC to know she was drunk. We could smell it.”
Getting drunk had never been Sunday’s thing.
“She’s pretty beat up,” Becker said. “Her driver’s license will be confiscated, and she’ll be facing charges.”
Nice. Another sibling facing charges. And how did anyone live and work in LA without a car? Denny wasn’t even sure exactly what she was doing for a job, just that she had a position with some media company. Or maybe it was an ad agency.
His eyes drifted to the double doors of the stainless fridge, which were covered in calendars, Molly’s drawings, and family photos. He sought out a particular picture, the one of him and his three younger siblings from nine years ago at their parents’ anniversary shindig, a surprise party Sunday had worked like a dog to pull off. There was an obvious resemblance thanks to the thick brown hair, hazel eyes, and square chins. You couldn’t tell from the picture that Sunday had gotten no sleep the night before, because twenty-year-olds could do that. Young and fresh in a breezy summer dress, the only girl nestled among her brothers in their khakis and white button-downs. Long wavy hair loose around her shoulders, infectious smile revealing deep dimples. But he remembered how, right up until their startled parents walked into the room, she’d been running to and fro, checking off lists, ordering the rest of them around. She’d wanted everything to be perfect for their parents. That was the kind of thing Sunday did back then.
Denny pictured her waking up. Alone. “Do you have any idea how long she’s going to be in the hospital?” he asked.
“At least a couple days. And I’m guessing she’ll need some help after that, getting home and whatnot…”
Who was he trying to kid, he was going to LA. He would get out there, make sure she was okay, maybe learn a little about her life. He was curious, particularly after this call. Perhaps things hadn’t worked out for her quite as well as he’d assumed. Or maybe it was just too much partying. Either way, it seemed Sunday had received some of that comeuppance their mother used to warn them about.
“Okay,” he said. “I can get there by tonight.”
“I’ll let the hospital know.”
Denny thanked him for the call, which seemed an ironic thing to do, and hung up.
* * *
By any measure this was not a good time to be leaving, and more than once that morning it occurred to him that he was inconveniencing himself to such a degree for Sunday, who had checked out of this family long ago. He could have just called her at the hospital, sent some flowers. But that didn’t feel right. Maybe it was knowing he was her emergency contact—that, despite the time and distance, she still wanted him to look out for her.
Arrangements had to be made for coverage at the pub since Kale was away—this all would have been much easier if his business partner had been home instead of attending a funeral in Ireland. Denny broke the news about Sunday’s accident to his dad and Jackie, who both had a lot of questions Denny couldn’t answer. Most of them amounted to: What the hell was she thinking? They all agreed not to tell Shane until they had more info on her condition, though there was a possibility his dad might slip. Lately his short-term memory was inconsistent. Denny called his auntie Clare and asked her to check on his dad each morning, make sure he took his pills. He couldn’t afford to mess with his blood pressure meds. Clare said of course she would check on her brother, didn’t she always? And, she added, she’d known living in that debauched city would do Sunday in. Denny could practically hear the sign of the cross over the phone.
In the middle of all that he paused to take Molly to kindergarten. It was the highlight of each morning and he wasn’t about to give it up just because Theresa had taken their daughter and left to stay with her sister, Angie, because he “wasn’t communicating” with her. But it meant he had to drive to Angie’s place first to pick her up.
Copyright © 2021 by Tracey Lange
