Diane had lost him.
But Nathan had lost everything.
There are losses you suffer, and there are losses you cause.
They do not belong in the same sentence.
Months later, after physical therapy had taught Emily how to walk without flinching, she went back to the road outside Mount Pleasant.
Her mother drove.
They did not bring flowers.
Emily did not want lilies anywhere near that place.
They parked on the shoulder in daylight.
The ditch was lower than she remembered.
The pines looked ordinary.
Cars passed with their tires whispering over damp pavement.
For a long time, Emily stood there with one hand on the door of her mother’s SUV and the other pressed over her ribs.
She thought she would feel Nathan in the road.
She did not.
She felt him in other places.
In the spare key still on her ring.
In the grocery store parking lot where he once changed her tire.
