Second Chance Vows novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Report

My assistant came back at six the next morning with a gray face and a folder.

I took him out to the back steps, where Cosima could not hear.

"The lab ran it twice," he said. "It's a heavy sedative, Mr. Fairchild. A prescription drug, and the amount in that bottle is huge."

"Enough to knock a man out?"

"Enough to stop an older man's heart, if he takes pills for it. And for you, with the alcohol allergy, they said you would not wake up."

The cold of the steps came up through my shoes.

I had been right to knock the glass away.

"There's something else," my assistant said, and he opened the folder. "You asked me to look at Trent's company card."

He handed me a printed invoice.

It was from a body shop on the south side, and it listed a new front bumper, a replaced headlight and a full respray in gray.

The car was a gray Audi.

The charge had gone to a Fairchild Freight account, and I read the date twice.

It was the Saturday three months ago.

The day after Cosima Kingsford had been run off Harbor Road.

I did not know how I knew the date, and then I did.

The accident had been in the news, and I had read it in my first life.

A girl from a good family had been found in a wrecked car at the bottom of an embankment, and the other driver had not stopped.

Nobody had ever caught them.

My throat went dry, and I thought of my own crash on the bridge.

I had always believed it was an accident.

I looked at the invoice, and for the first time I wondered if it had been one.

"Keep this," I said. "Tell no one. Not my father, and not her."

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