“Then start talking.”
“It’s complicated.”
“My d.e.a.d sister just walked out of a dentist’s office. I think we passed complicated about forty minutes ago.”
She flinched.
Good.
I wanted her to flinch.
I wanted someone besides me to hurt.
Rebecca gave me the address of a small apartment complex near the edge of the city.
During the drive, she kept touching a leather cord around her wrist.
A nervous habit.
When we were children, she had twisted the strings of her hoodies until Mom threatened to cut them all off.
Some things had survived.
Others hadn’t.
“What happened after the crash?” I asked.
Rebecca stared ahead.
“I remember pieces.”
“Give me the pieces.”
“The SUV rolled twice. Maybe three times. I remember glass. Mud. Rain.”
My hands tightened around the steering wheel.
“I remember waking up somewhere outside the vehicle.”
“You got out?”
“I don’t think so. Doctors later believed I was thrown through one of the rear windows.”
I pictured it and immediately wished I hadn’t.
“Then what?”
“I walked.”
“Injured?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Brain injury. Shock. I wasn’t thinking normally.”
She told me a delivery driver found her before sunrise nearly four miles from the accident site, wandering beside a rural service road.
No wallet.
No phone.
No shoes.
Severe concussion.
Broken clavicle.
Several deep cuts.
When paramedics asked her name, she couldn’t answer.
“Why didn’t they connect you to the crash?”
“They didn’t know about it yet. The vehicle was below the road and hidden by trees. And the hospital I was taken to wasn’t the one near Boone.”
“How?”
“The driver was headed east. He called emergency services after crossing into another county.”
I shook my head.
“Someone should have figured it out.”
“I know.”
“Police should have circulated your description.”
“They did.”
“And?”
Rebecca stared at her hands.
