Chapter 10: The Sedan

Declan's POV

I woke with my hand clenched in the sheet, and for a moment I did not know which life I was in.

Then she moved against my shoulder, and her hair brushed my chin, and I knew.

It was Sunday morning, grey and dry, with no rain on the glass.

I lay still so I would not wake her.

Her palm was still over my scar.

I had not told her the whole truth about it, and I had not told her about the sidewalk.

Eleven years is a long time to carry one wet night.

I had carried it through the week I woke.

I watched the ceiling and went through it the way I did every morning, in the same order.

The rain, and the windshield all light.

A woman with a bag on her shoulder, crossing at Alder and Ninth with her head down.

The sound, and the road, and her open eyes.

I said I would call someone, and I did not call anyone.

By morning I knew her name from the paper, and I never turned myself in.

That is the part I would take out of my life, if I could take out one thing.

In this life I had already put my grey sedan into a lamppost on Hennepin the week my father died, and the left headlight was new.

The morning I woke into it, the date on my phone was the one I had dreaded for eleven years.

It was seven o'clock.

I had two hours.

I called no one.

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