Chapter 14: Two Years

Damian's POV

I left the hospital at midnight and drove the coast road with the windows down.

Jo thought I had never been back there. She was wrong.

I came every March ninth, after my shift, and sat on the shoulder with the engine off.

Tonight I stopped at the same guardrail and got out.

The road was empty.

The salt air smelled the way it had that night, wet and cold.

I put my palm on the rail until the metal stung.

Five years ago I had come down this stretch with thirty hours behind me and my wife-to-be beside me, talking about nothing.

I remembered a thump. I remembered a pothole, and my own voice saying sorry.

I remembered Jo turning around in her seat, and her face when she turned back.

"A deer," she'd said. "Stay in the car, Damian. I'll look."

I stayed. I was thirty hours awake and I believed her.

Then I watched her in the mirror, running down the shoulder with her phone at her ear.

I did not ask why she ran so fast for a deer.

That was the part I could never forgive. I had not asked.

I got back in the car and drove to Route 6.

The body shop was a cinderblock garage with one light on over the office.

The owner was asleep in a recliner with the television murmuring.

He woke when I knocked, and he knew me at once.

"Doc," he said. "It's been what, two years?"

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