I'll See You Again Part 11

In my search for answers, I suppose I also subconsciously hoped to absolve Diane of blame. Maybe that sounds backward. The media had already condemned her, and I could have joined right in, dumping all the culpability for the tragedy on her vodka-swilling. But I just couldn't reconcile the kind Diane I knew with the evil Diane depicted by the tabloids. And I suppose self-protective mechanisms kicked in again, because if I'd allowed myself to believe that she had done this on purpose, I would simply have gone crazy.

Dominic Barbara's investigator Ruskin started talking about exhuming Diane's body to search for more clues. I understood the impetus, but I also knew it could backfire. Who knew what they would actually find in the quest to clear Diane's name.

One day I called Jay Schuler, Danny's sister-in-law, who shared my fascination with plumbing the depths of the tragedy over and over. For hours, we would ponder the possibilities.

Theory #1: Diane had a tooth abscess.

Diane hated dentists. One of the surveillance tapes at the convenience store showed her walking in, talking briefly to the clerk, then walking out when she couldn't find what she wanted. Police speculated that she had been looking for pain medication.

Neither Jay nor I quite knew how to link the theory of the throbbing tooth to the final result. Jay thought Diane might have begun drinking to ease the pain, but I couldn't see her chugging vodka in front of the children.

The facts pointed in one direction, but my heart pointed in another. I knew all about the toxicology report and the bottle of vodka found on the scene. But I kept thinking of the quote attributed to Albert Einstein: If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.

When it came right down to it, I didn't believe Diane had been drunk. On the phone before the accident, she had slurred her words, but that could have meant a stroke or a seizure. And when I had spoken to her forty minutes earlier, she had been fine. The police report might have concluded that she had gone from fine to deadly drunk in forty minutes, but I couldn't fathom it.

In one of our endless conversations, Jay reminded me of a case she'd heard of in which a fireman died in the line of duty; when tests showed a high blood alcohol level, experts testified that at scorchingly hot temperatures, blood sugar can morph to mimic high alcohol levels.

Theory #2: Someone in McDonald's drugged her.

After Diane insisted on getting what the children wanted (lunch at breakfast-time), she made a fuss and spoke to the manager. Was it possible she annoyed someone-either behind the counter or in front-enough to take revenge? Some version of the date-rape drug would have knocked her out in the car. Maybe it sounded unlikely, but was anything in this whole event probable or predictable?

Jay spun some stories that seemed too far out even to consider. She told me about a drug bust at that McDonald's involving some employees just a few months earlier, and a police officer, somehow related to the events on the Taconic, who had died under strange circ.u.mstances. She talked about the possibility of conspiracies and cover-ups.

No matter how far-fetched or realistic our theories were, we still had nothing but conjecture, and the bottom line remained: no simple explanation fit.

Maybe what kept the tragedy so alive in the media was its mystery.

"I know you need to find answers," I told Jay. "But if you're ever one hundred percent confident that Diane was just drunk, please don't tell me."

"Why?" she asked.

"Because I can't think like that," I said. "I need to be in a good spot with Warren, and hating Diane won't help. I have to believe that she was the person I knew."

I needed even the merest sliver of hope that something else had happened that day, otherwise I'd hate Diane and I'd hate Warren and then I would not be able to go on. Still, no matter what the explanation, the fact remained that Diane had been behind the wheel in the accident that killed my girls.

Seven

Warren went back to work in September, about two months after the accident. He owns a real-estate appraisal company, and since the mortgage crisis. .h.i.t, he hadn't been quite as busy as before. But he had a job, a place to go. In general, he wanted to get through each day with as little emotion as possible, and work allowed him a mental checklist to get through. When he got home, he'd have dinner, watch sports on TV, and go to sleep-another day without the girls completed. By staying regimented, he didn't have to think.

I could do nothing but think. Endless questions spun through my mind, tormenting me. Had the girls suffered? Did they know what was happening as the car sped along the Taconic Parkway? What were their final thoughts? Were they scared?

I played and replayed each horrible moment in my mind. I needed to talk. I wanted someone to help me take the pain away. But how could Warren do that for me when he was struggling with his own anguish? Our approaches to the overwhelming grief were miles apart. I looked to him for strength, but all I saw was heartache. We were both broken, but in different ways.

Love should be a balm in times of grief, but instead, being together just caused us more hurt. Every time I looked at Warren, I thought: It was your sister who did this. Your sister destroyed our lives. I couldn't blame him for her actions, but there was n.o.body left to hate. Warren was in front of me every morning and night, and the anger burned. When I saw the misery in Warren's eyes, I knew he couldn't silence the chorus of guilt ringing in his own head. My anger and his guilt-the tensions between us grew in every way. We began fighting so ferociously that our friends felt uncomfortable about leaving us alone together. Anger, grief, guilt, and resentment are a toxic combination.

Warren started working long hours again, feeling better when he could keep himself distracted and his mind occupied. But his office is near our house, and one afternoon, I found him napping on the couch.

"Why are you here?" I asked when he finally woke up.

"I was tired."

"You're tired because you stay up at night," I sniped.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked.

"Take sleeping pills at night so you can work during the day."

"Leave me alone. I'll nap when I want to."

A ridiculous fight? Of course-they all were. On some level, the argument about his nap revealed my escalating fears about money. I didn't have a job and was worried that Warren wouldn't be able to work as hard as he had before. The deeper problem was that I had always turned to my husband for strength and now he had none to give. The early burst of courage and fort.i.tude he'd shown had seeped away. He wanted to help, but he couldn't take care of me anymore, since it was all he could do to take care of himself. As a man, he liked to fix problems. But this was beyond fixing.

One reason grieving couples break up is that simply seeing each other is a constant reminder of heartbreak. Warren would get up in the morning and hear me crying or see me upset and the rest of his day would be ruined. Sometimes I pretended to be asleep until after he left for work so that he didn't have to face my despair. People told us we should work on our marriage and communicate better, but that just made us laugh. Work on the marriage? We barely had the emotional energy to work our way through a bowl of oatmeal.

What's worse, being happy-even for a few minutes-seemed like a betrayal of the girls. Happiness became as dangerous an emotion to avoid as any other.

A few Sundays before the accident, Warren and I had gone with the girls to a baseball game at Citi Field. An ardent Mets fan, Warren had season tickets at the old Shea Stadium, and once a season, he'd treat each girl to a father-daughter date of baseball, hot dogs, and happy time together. Then Shea was torn down, and when the fancy new stadium went up, so did ticket prices.

That Sunday afternoon, Warren wanted to do something memorable with the whole family for the Fourth of July weekend. And for him, that meant the Mets. He asked our friends Mark and Isabelle if they wanted to join us, and when they agreed, he rushed to get tickets. It was last-minute, and he sprung for wildly expensive seats.

"Who cares, let's do it," he said.

"If it costs so much, shouldn't we do something the girls really like?" I asked.

Too late. He had the tickets in hand.

"They'll like this," he promised.

We ate lunch at the fancy Acela Club at the stadium and cheered all afternoon from our up-close seats. The children jumped up and down and waved to their favorite players. It was the kind of happy-go-lucky experience that leaves you wrung out from sheer pleasure by the end. Warren's enthusiasm percolated through all of us.

"An expensive day, but the best day," Warren said as we fell into bed that night.

Looking back to that day after the accident, I suspected that I'd never feel such lighthearted elation again. And I'd probably never go back to a Mets game, because the a.s.sociations would be too painful.

But in September, we returned to Citi Field. One of our friends, Paul Asencio, worked as an executive for the Mets, and he and his wife, Heather, had become intertwined in our lives since the accident. We sought comfort in them, as we did with so many others, and they responded. Paul and Heather must have looked at their own three energetic daughters and felt extraordinary empathy for us. With great warmth and generosity, Paul invited us and all our friends to be his guests at the game.

On a lovely fall evening, we arrived at the stadium and were ushered into a prime suite. No ballpark franks for us tonight-there was a bartender serving drinks and gourmet food piled high. As our friends milled around laughing and talking, Paul arranged for third baseman David Wright, Alyson's favorite player, to come by and say h.e.l.lo to us.

David Wright! It was like being face-to-face with George Clooney. The All-Star slugger posed for pictures and chatted for a few minutes. Warren was over the moon. And then it got even better. Paul took us down onto the field.

For a big baseball fan like Warren-and even for me-it was like stepping onto hallowed ground. Warren's dad came with us, and we all had silly smiles plastered across our faces.

Oh my gosh, I thought, my head spinning from the lights, the excitement, and the famous players tossing b.a.l.l.s a few feet from us. I'm having too much fun!