Reminders of Him

As the cab she takes approaches the Landry home, Kenna has time to reflect on how to approach Scotty’s parents. The two had only dated six months before the accident, and although both of them knew how deep their love was, to his parents she was little more than an annoyance.

Now she is uneasy. She has never even seen a photo of her daughter. She has brought a gift for Diem, a teething ring. She knows how much Scotty’s parents hate her. They blame her for leaving the scene of the accident and leaving Scotty to bleed to death out on the highway for more than six hours. She wonders if she could have saved him. She imagines how his parents must have felt when they heard the news about Scotty and after “being told [Kenna] left him there” (70). She will make sure she apologizes first. She will express her gratitude for their help with Diem. Just as she is approaching the front door, however, she hears Ledger call out to her. Ledger suddenly understands that “Nicole” is Kenna. He begins to push Kenna away from the house and pulls her into his house across the street.

He is furious, certain her coming into the bar the night before was a ploy. He dismisses the teething toy she brought—“she’s four” (76). Kenna slips out of his front door and heads back to the Landrys. Ledger runs after her and physically carries her back to his house. He threatens to call the police. She knows she is defeated. Ledger drives her back to her apartment: “I never felt further from my daughter than I do at this moment” (78).

Before Kenna gets out of the truck, Ledger assures her Scotty’s parents do not want her to interfere in their lives. He dismisses any idea of forgiveness. The story everyone knows is that Kenna left the accident too drunk or too stoned to understand what she had done and left Scotty to die. Ledger calls her “[u]ninvolved. Uncaring. Unworthy” (83). Even as he cannot help but notice how Diem resembles her mother, Ledger coolly tells Kenna to stay away from the Landrys. He dismisses her copious tears, saying, “Diem is their daughter. Your rights were terminated […] go back to Denver” (82).

Outside her apartment but too upset to stay alone in her room, Kenna meets Lucy, a teenage girl who has Down Syndrome and works at the grocery store. Lucy prefers to be called “Lady Diana,” presumably after the Princess of Wales. Lucy asks Kenna about her life and invites her to set off some sparklers later.

When she is alone again, Kenna writes a new letter to Scotty. She laments how she has still not even seen their daughter. She recalls a woman she met in prison, a lifer named Ivy, whose compassionate guidance and gentle disposition in the first difficult months after Diem’s birth made her a kind of surrogate mother for Kenna. Ivy told Kenna she cannot dwell on her loss: “Are you gonna live in your sadness or are you gonna die in it?” (89), she asks. That misery, Kenna writes to Scotty, has returned now. Suddenly missing the woman who helped her, she decides to name her little kitten Ivy.

Not surprisingly, when Ledger returns home there are numerous panicked phone messages from the Landrys. They saw Kenna running toward the house. When Patrick Landry comes over to talk, his anger against Kenna is so strong that Ledger is not sure how to handle it. Ledger remembers how both parents struggled to adjust to Scotty’s death and how they blamed his girlfriend and her carelessness for his death. Patrick asks Ledger whether they should be prepared for a custody fight.

As Ledger talks with Roman at work, he begins to see that maybe the town has been too harsh on Kenna. After all, it was an accident. Kenna has suffered as much as anybody and now is being denied her own daughter: “She is responsible for the accidental death of someone she was in love with,” Roman tells Ledger, emphasizing the word accidental. Feeling unsettled and frustrated, Ledger heads out to drive to Kenna’s. When he sees her with Lucy setting off sparklers, he feels angry. The conversation with Kenna is confrontational. Kenna dismisses his concern as shallow and self-serving. Lucy takes an immediate dislike to Ledger. Ledger drives away, more confused than ever, his “brain like a pretzel” (100).

Kenna thinks about her own mother, a flighty and irresponsible woman who abandoned her when Kenna was seven years old. Kenna spent difficult years in the foster care system. After being shuttled from home to home, Kenna found her way to an older woman named Mona. Their relationship was different. She helped Mona keep house. They talked and shared experiences. Kenna understood this was what a mother was supposed to do. When her own mother returned to reclaim her, the relationship was strained. That dysfunctional dynamic made inevitable Kenna’s poor performance in school, her broken relationship with friends, and her low self-esteem.

Kenna recalls, desperate and in prison, writing to her mother to help her with arranging care for the baby she was carrying. Her own mother could petition for some guardian rights, but her mother refused outright: “There was nothing in my mother’s eyes. No sympathy. No empathy” (105). Kenna, her mother said sanctimoniously, was just trying to use her after all these years. Kenna was left crushed and alone.

Patrick comes over to Ledger’s house. He is concerned that Kenna might make a move to regain Diem. Ledger, for the first time, feels uncertain. In the short time he has gotten to know Kenna, he is not sure she is the monster everyone assumes she is. Ledger shares with Patrick one of his fondest stories about Scotty. One afternoon, a pigeon happened to land by them. From that moment, the two shared a catchphrase about that pigeon anytime something odd happened.

At work on her first day, on her break, Kenna writes a quick letter to Scotty about when the two of them first verbalized their love: “We were happy, in love, full of hormones, full of hope” (113). She remembers how taken she was with an expensive engagement ring in an antiques shop. It was $4000, more than either could afford.

Ledger comes into the grocery store to shop. Despite her misgivings over him, Kenna cannot dismiss her feelings: “His eyes are friendlier, his mouth even more inviting, and I don’t like that I am thinking good things about the man who physically pulled me from the house my daughter was in” (118). She helps carry his groceries to his truck—store policy—when she spots a scrunchie on the floorboard. She is certain it is Diem’s. It has a single strand of long brown hair that matches Kenna’s hair color. She tells Ledger she is keeping the scrunchie.

It is a slow Monday night at the bar when Kenna walks in and orders coffee. She lingers over it. When it is time to leave, she asks Ledger for a ride because it is raining. Ledger hesitates. He has spent five years hating the woman who let his best friend die. As he drives her home in the rain, he tells himself that Kenna is lonely, and “people need people” (126). She asks whether he regrets kissing her the first night they met. To her dismay, he confirms his regret.

Cuddling with her kitten Ivy, unable to sleep, Kenna ponders whether kidnapping her daughter would work. She would be caught and sent back to prison, but her desperation would be clear and, unlike at the trial after the accident where she never spoke up for herself, this time she would tell the jury how she felt. She knows, however, that kidnapping is not the answer; she needs Scotty’s parents to talk with her. The only time she ever met them was at a dinner at Scotty’s house that turned awkward. Kenna felt them judging her, looking down at her as if she was not worth their attention. Scotty told her that he was a miracle baby and that his parents struggled to conceive. He promised Kenna someday they would have a home and children. She spent the night—they made love in his bedroom—and the following morning Kenna was sure his mother was unhappy: “Girls like me just don’t seem to fit in any family” (132).