While tracking you down to find your contact details, I saw through social media that you have grandchildren. So, please, for the sake of your grandchildren, you need to face facts. Your son is not the person you think he is. Stop protecting him and do something about it. Otherwise I will.

Edie Simmons

*

Since reading the email, Pete was no longer speaking to his mother. Mimi didn’t blame him, she wasn’t speaking to Jill either. Even if Jill didn’t entirely understand what Edie had tried to tell her all those years ago, she still could have tried harder. She could have asked Edie to explain. She could have spoken to Frank, to Pete, to someone. She could have kept a closer eye on Tony. But since the day Mimi had met Pete, he’d always made jokes about Tony being the favourite son. And as far as Mimi was concerned, that was why Jill had been blinded to Tony’s flaws.

Darren had been just as shocked as Pete to find out the truth about Tony. Mimi didn’t know if he fully comprehended what it meant for her family, for Callie and her future, knowing what had happened to her. He didn’t have children. So as much as he was furious about what Tony had done, he was more forgiving of the position his mother had been in.

The investigation into the accident had been gruelling. Question after question about who hit who and when. Did you hear a bang before you felt the first impact? What did you see in front of you? Behind you?

Eventually, it was concluded that Andrea’s convertible was at the centre of it all, based on everyone’s recollections of the order of events. But they didn’t know what it was that had caused her to lose concentration and veer into the side of Jill’s car.

The problem was, no one could ask her.

She was still in a coma.

*

Jill

Jill sat by Andrea’s bed, holding her hand, willing Andrea’s fingers to tighten around her own. But the doctors had been blunt about her prognosis. They’d explained that she’d suffered a traumatic head injury as well as a chest injury with a tension pneumothorax. Basically, a collapsed lung. Apparently, Darren had saved her life by persisting with CPR until help arrived. He’d kept her heart pumping until the paramedics could decompress her chest to release the air and allow her heart to beat again. But there’d been complications during surgery and she’d been placed in an induced coma to give her body a chance to recover.