Fatality by Caroline B. Cooney Page A

for a future, Rose? College? Career? Wedding? Babies? A home of your own? Whaddaya want out there, Rose?” CJ Pierson stepped into her stare spot.
    Rose’s hands were so cold she wanted mittens.
    “Rose,” said her mother very softly. “Are we on your list of reasons to stay alive?”
    Rose saw her parents very clearly at that moment: her father in such bad shape that even a relative stranger like Augusta was upset by it; her mother cut to the bone by Rose’s sudden change of personality; both of them in terror for their little girl’s life and safety.
    She knew then that she was going to have to tell.
    How would she do it? In what order? Which people would she include? With what words would she explain?
    And when she was done—what would their world be?
    Which kind of shattered world was better—one with silence or one with explanation?
    She held out her arms to her parents, who sprang forward, as if thinking that explanations and long paragraphs would come along with hugs. Her cheek pressed against Dad’s shirt, and she saw that one of the buttons had come off at some point and been stitched back on. The thread did not quite match. Rose imagined her mother standing over the ironing board, threading the needle.
    CJ Pierson sighed. “Okay, Rose. We aren’t going to waste more time. You got second thoughts, you call us. You’re not gonna do traffic detail again. How about we assign you clerical work in the police department? You willing to do that?”
    “Awesome,” said Rose, before she could stop herself.
    Everybody laughed for a moment, even Rose, and then the strangers drove away, and Rose was left with the parents to whom she was now a stranger.
    They’re suffering too much, she thought. Tell them.
    … But once they know, they’ll suffer even more. So don’t tell them.
    Her parents had coffee. Mom could not pour without spilling. Finally she gave up. “Rose, do you know I can’t sleep? I get up every few hours all night long and look in on you. I haven’t done that since you were a newborn. I used to be afraid of crib death. I worried all the time when you and Tabor were babies. I used to tremble that we’d put you safely to sleep one night and in the morning you’d be blue and silent and dead. I was so glad when you got beyond the age for crib death. I thought I’d never be so scared for your life as I was the first few months. But I was wrong. I’m that scared now.”
    Rose could not look at her mother. She looked instead at one of the family portraits on the wall, a beautiful photograph of her parents before they had had children. Her father—so young! So slim and so much hair. Her mother—slender as a high school girl, with hair and makeup on which she clearly spent hours. Now they were both chunky, Dad’s hair merely a fringe. There was hardly a trace in him of the eager, exuberant young man with the lovely young wife.
    Tell, thought Rose, tell them now and get it over with.
    But she had used silence one time too many.
    Her mother slammed the coffeepot down, and since it was glass, it smashed on the table and hot coffee flooded the place mats and dripped on the floor. “You explain to me what’s going on, young lady!” shouted her mother. “Don’t you dare pull any fast ones with me.”
    You pulled a fast one once, thought Rose, and for the first time, Rose slightly hated her mother. The only surprising thing was that it had taken so long.
    The hate was satisfying and exonerating. Inside the hate, Rose could be silent forever. “I’ll clean up the coffee,” she said primly.
    The hate had vanished before she reached the paper towels, but her parents had vanished before she got back with them. She heard doors slamming as they chose solitude over another minute in their daughter’s presence.
    She wondered why Anjelica Lofft had called twice. Whether she would call again.
    And whether it had been a black Explorer that had waited so patiently in the emergency lane to see who wore the