Prologue
The scream of sirens roused him. He opened his eyes, slow and painful, and could see flashing blurs of red and blue emergency lights come into focus. He could feel something wet trickling up the side of his head. Blood, he thought with panic rising in his chest. It didn't make sense though. The world seemed wrong and then he realized that he was still in his truck, strapped into his seatbelt, hanging upside down. Gouts of crimson dripped from his head and pooled on the interior of the truck's roof.
He tried to suck in a deep breath, but the pain was too much. Broken ribs, he thought. The way his body jerked and twitched when the truck flipped was a wonder of how he was still alive at all.
"Sir," a voice called. "Sir, are you okay?"
The little strength he had left allowed him to nod slightly.
"Help is on the way! Don't move." This was another voice, he thought. It had a different tremble.
Motherfucker must've been drunk. In his mind, he relived the vision of the tiny Honda Civic fly into his lane and slam into the Chevy, sending him and his wife flipping and bouncing out of control. He could almost hear the echoes of crunching metal and shattering glass.
The voice came again. The second one, he was certain. "Don't move, Sir. Help will be here soon."
He didn't care about help, not now. He craned his neck so he could look into the passenger seat. She was unmoving, limp arms splayed above her head, legs pushed into the windshield. He watched her chest to see if it would rise and fall, to show some signs of life. He watched for what seemed like an eternity, but she didn't breathe.
His wife was gone, nothing but a human ball of flesh and bone. As grisly as it was, she looked peaceful, and he told himself that she had died instantly, that she didn't feel any pain.
"Thank you," he whispered through quavering lips. Saying goodbye was too hard. "Thank you for not letting her suffer."
His tears dripped into the pool of blood above his head. Gritting his teeth through the pain, he reached out and grabbed her hand. "I love you, Olivia . . . I promise to always take care of our boy. Always."
