I read it in my brother's car with the rain coming down. I am going to put down the part I read three times.
WITNESS STATES HE PULLED OVER AND RAN TO THE VEHICLES. WITNESS STATES THE BUICK DRIVER (HABERLE) WAS ALREADY OUT OF HIS CAR AND HAD OPENED THE REAR DRIVER SIDE DOOR OF THE CHEVROLET. WITNESS STATES HABERLE WAS BLEEDING FROM THE HEAD AND SMELLED STRONGLY OF ALCOHOL. WITNESS STATES THERE WAS A SMALL FEMALE CHILD IN THE REAR SEAT IN A CAR SEAT WEARING A PINK COAT AND SCREAMING. WITNESS STATES THE CHILD WAS TRYING TO LOOK AT THE FRONT SEAT WHERE THE DRIVER (FENNESSY) WAS. WITNESS STATES HABERLE GOT INTO THE BACK SEAT WITH THE CHILD AND HELD HER FACE IN HIS HANDS AND TURNED IT TOWARD HIM AND KEPT SAYING "LOOK AT ME, NOT AT HIM. LOOK AT ME, HONEY. NOT AT HIM." WITNESS STATES HABERLE KEPT SAYING THIS OVER AND OVER AND WOULD NOT LET THE CHILD TURN HER HEAD UNTIL FIRE DEPT. ARRIVED AND REMOVED HER FROM THE VEHICLE. WITNESS STATES HABERLE WAS CRYING. WITNESS STATES HE HEARD HABERLE TELL A FIREFIGHTER "DON'T LET HER SEE HIM. PLEASE DON'T LET HER SEE HIM." WITNESS STATES HABERLE THEN SAT DOWN ON THE CURB AND DID NOT RESIST WHEN POLICE ARRIVED.
I put the paper down in my lap.
Look at me, not at him.
I have said some version of it to maybe ten thousand people. I have said it to people I will never meet, whose faces I will never see, on the floors of their kitchens and in the wreckage of their cars, and every one of those times I thought it was mine. I thought I had invented it. I thought it was just a thing my mouth did when someone was frightened. And it had been put in me at seven years old, in a crushed Chevy Lumina at the corner of Twelfth and Peach, by a drunk man with blood running into his eyes who had just killed my father and who did not, in that moment, want me to see what he had done.
"Mom knew," I said. My voice sounded very far away. "When I said it to the dolls. She knew."
"She read the statement a hundred times," Eamon said. "So did I. I used to think—" He stopped. "I used to think it was the worst thing in the file. Worse than the blood alcohol. Worse than the autopsy. I used to think, who does he think he is, getting to be the one who comforted you. Getting to be a— a hero in it. Getting to have that." He looked down at his hands. "I never put it in a single statement. Not at sentencing. Not at the hearings. I left it out every time. I told myself it wasn't relevant."
The rain went on. A bus went by on Twenty-sixth Street, throwing up a wall of brown water, and slowed at the shelter, and I held my breath, and then it pulled away again, and the brown coat was still there on the bench.
"He let it go," I said. "The bus. He let it go."
"He's waiting for the next one."
"He's going to freeze to death waiting. He doesn't have his hat." I picked up the gray wool cap from where I'd put it on the dashboard and held it in my lap on top of the police report. "Eamon. Why did you have the file in your briefcase today? You said not usually. You said today."