Chapter 9: Ben's POV: The Nineteenth

Ben's POV

I drove Harbor Road at eleven-forty on Friday night, the way I had on every nineteenth for three years and two months.

There is a guardrail at the bottom of the hill, past the ferry lot, where the road bends toward the water.

I parked on the gravel and left the engine running.

The flowers I had left last month were still there, brown now, tied to the rail with a strip of blue cloth.

Annika had worn that color.

She was twenty-four. She had worked the late shift at the clinic, and she liked to walk home because the road was empty and she could sing.

I was on a ship in the Gulf when the call came. It took me four days to get home.

By then it was over.

There had been a plea, a judge, a name on a form, and a sentence that my mother said was too light.

I didn't see the driver once.

I never asked for a photograph. I didn't want a face to hate.

I had the name, and the name was enough.

Willa Soderberg.

I got out of the truck and stood at the rail with my hands in my pockets.

"I married her, Annie," I said to the dark.

It sounded insane out loud.

"Ma asked me, and she's dying, and I couldn't say no. I told myself I'd put up with it for a year and keep my distance."

The wind moved the blue cloth.

"I can't keep it," I said.

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