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account. I wanted to hear what she had to say. Better that she let something slip in front of Liz thanin front of the police. I didn’t have to worry, though. She skipped over our first brush with Juwan, and most of what she said was repeated, stuff she’d overheard. It occurred to me that the accident might have unfolded so fast she hadn’t really had a chance to form her own impression. For all I knew, she’d been looking off in another direction and hadn’t even seen what happened.
    I waited until we got to the restaurant to tell my version, basically the same story I’d told the police. Somehow, with Liz, it felt like even more of a lie. She shut her eyes and pulled Sara close when I came to the part about the Jag almost landing on us.
    “I don’t know if I can hear this,” she said.
    “But we’re okay, Mom.”
    “That’s all that matters,” I said.
    Liz stared at the untouched slice of pizza on her plate. “But what if you weren’t?”
    With the gaslight down, our end of the block was dark, but that didn’t stop Sara from taking Liz over to see the tree as soon as we got home. The skeleton on Clarice’s door was gone. I rang the bell, explained the situation, and asked if we could bandage the tree. Clarice said of course and turned the porch light on. I went back to our house for a flashlight and the gauze Liz used when she and Sara played doll hospital. When I came out again, Sara was touching the rawplaces on the tree where the car had broken the bark. She aimed the flashlight and followed me around the trunk as I unspooled the gauze, trying to cover as much of the damage as possible. It got harder near the ground, where the trunk bulged with thick knots. Liz said they reminded her of skinned knees.
    Sara said she thought the tree was dying. “All the bark’s peeling off, even where the car didn’t hit.”
    “Come on,” Liz said, tucking the last of the gauze in on itself. “You’ve seen sycamores. That’s just how they are.”
    “I’m calling this one Sicky,” Sara said. “Sicky Sycamore.”
    That night, for the first time in her life, Sara asked for a night-light. She said she didn’t want to go to sleep because she was afraid she might stop breathing.
    “You won’t,” I said. “I promise.”
    “But everybody does sometime.”
    “Only when they’re old or hurt. You’re young, and I’m not going to let anything hurt you.”
    After she was in bed, Liz and I watched the local news to see if there was a story about the accident. I was hoping there wouldn’t be, but no such luck. A traffic fatality in Newark, just a few blocks away, might not have gotten much notice, but this was quiet, suburban South Orange. They showed footage of the police, the bystanders, the upside-down convertible. You could see our house in the background.
    Liz moved closer to me on the sofa. “Why’d it have to happen on our street?”
    The reporter—the same one who’d called out to me—said they hadn’t determined the cause of the crash but that alcohol was reportedly involved. That was a relief to hear, but as soon as she started talking about the victim—a high school student, his name wasn’t being released—I felt sick. I reached for the remote and turned off the TV.
    “And why do people drive like such fucking fools?” I said.
    “Was he all bloody?”
    “Not really. His head was messed up. The car might have rolled over on him.”
    “Don’t think about it. I shouldn’t have asked.”
    We went upstairs to look in on Sara, who didn’t stir as we each kissed her good night again, and then Liz said she was going to bed; she had an early meeting. She’d been having a lot of early meetings since she became HR director that spring. Her bank was trying to buy another bank, just like it had bought her old bank in Cleveland. I remembered how excited we’d been when they’d promoted her to New York. A life on the East Coast had seemed bigger, more promising and exciting. Now I wished we’d