Chapter 6: The Call

The phone rang at 7:14 in the morning, Eastern.

I was half in the kitchen, half in the doorway, watching Allie butter toast she was not going to eat because she had started talking about whether we should go to the National Gallery before her flight. The ringtone was my mother’s. I almost let it go to voicemail. I almost said, I’ll call her back after coffee. I picked up because daughters pick up.

It was not my mother.

It was a man who said he was a sergeant with the California Highway Patrol and asked if I was Sarah Lang, daughter of Robert and Diane Lang of San Mateo. He said the names the way people say names when they have already used them too many times in one night. I said yes. Allie looked up from the toast. I turned my body toward the window so she would not see my face before I understood it myself.

There had been a collision on 101, south of the city, in the thin hours. A tractor-trailer. Their sedan. He used the phrase did not survive the scene. He used the phrase both occupants. He asked if I had a sister. He asked if I had someone with me.

I said, “She’s here.”

Allie was already standing.

I do not remember sitting down. I remember the edge of the table in my palm. I remember Allie saying Sarah? the way she used to say it when she was small and a storm hit the power. I remember handing her the phone because the sergeant needed a second next of kin and because my mouth had stopped doing language.

She listened. She did not scream. She made a sound I had never heard from her, low and cut off, and then she said, “Yes. I understand. Thank you,” like manners could keep the floor from tilting.

When she set the phone down she looked at me and said, “Both of them.”

“Yes.”

“On the way home from dinner. The man said they were coming back from the city.”

“Yes.”

We stood in my kitchen with the toast going cold and the butter knife still in her hand. Outside, Georgetown did the ordinary morning. A bus hissed. Someone laughed on the sidewalk. The world did not have the decency to pause.

Allie put the knife down very carefully, as if it might break. Then she walked into me. Not a kiss. Not even quite a hug. She put her face against my shoulder and her hands in the back of my shirt and held on like the room was moving. I put my arms around her and felt her shaking start, delayed, as if her body had to catch up to the sentence.