Page 24 of When We Met

You know when you’re lost and you turn down the music? It’s as if your head needs to the quiet to calculate the level of fucked you’re about to be. I pick up the map once more and try to read it. There has to be a connecting highway around here somewhere. Peeling my eyes away from the snow, I grab it and hold it close to my face. That’s when I see what looks to be something standing in the road. Or I’m hallucinating. I have been driving for seventeen hours. I could be by this point.

Squinting at the road, I try to see through the white blindness and grip my hands a little tighter on my heated steering wheel. “What are you?” I ask to no one, hoping whatever it is tells me.

I think I hit the brakes. No, I’m sure I hit the brakes, but if you’ve ever tried to stop on ice, which I never have, you can’t. My Mercedes traction control starts beeping, or something is beeping at me, and I’m skidding and sliding right into whatever it is standing in the middle of the road.

I snap my eyes shut, bracing for the impact, and let God have the wheel because there’s no possible way I’m going to maneuver out of this spin. I flip my car around twice in the middle of the road and then hit the big dog, horse, deer, I have no clue what, but head-on.

It’s then, through a shriek of screams that leave my mouth and my car sailing through the air, through a fence, and into the side of a building that I realize the animal, now through my windshield, has antlers.

“Why didn’t you move?” I scream at him, just as I hit the building and black out.

Probably should have thought this one through

BARRON

“Lil said you sent the papers back.”

“Yep.” I use my keys to open the beer bottle in my hand. “And I’m going to keep sending them back.” I glance over at him. He’s staring at the crackling fire as he loads another log. “Did you sign the papers Carly gave you? Wait, is she still at the house?”

“I didn’t sign them yet. I’m gonna have Kev look over them first. Make sure she’s not fucking me over, but yeah, she’s still at the house. Didn’t want her driving in this storm.”

“Makes sense. Man, I didn’t even know you guys were having problems.”

“I don’t think I did either. Fuck, I did, but still. I didn’t think it was that bad.”

I stare at my hand holding the beer and the spot on my left hand that used to have a ring. A promise I couldn’t keep. “It’s never as bad as it seems.” I knew when things went from bad to worse. It happened in the weeks following Sev’s birth when Tara couldn’t be bothered with holding her newborn daughter. We didn’t plan Camdyn, and in no way did we think Tara would get pregnant again nine months later. Sure, we knew it was a possibility, but I’d say it took any chance of us making it and destroyed it. Truth is, I’m not sure Tara ever wanted kids. And seeing how she hasn’t seen them in three years, I’d say my theory was right.

A loud noise shakes the windows in the house.

“Did you hear that?” Morgan asks, sitting forward as his neck cranes forward toward the large windows overlooking the field behind my house.

I set my beer on the coffee table in front of me. “Maybe snow falling from the roof?”

He stands up. “No, it was definitely louder than that.”

I look toward the girls’ room, thinking one of them fell out of bed or a tree fell outside. With the winds nearing fifty miles an hour and the lights flickering every couple of minutes, I wouldn’t be surprised if the power goes out soon.

“It sounded like something hit hard,” Morgan notes, standing up.

We move around the house, trying to see what the noise was, when I notice what looks to be brake lights illuminating in the whiteout near the repair shop.

“That’s weird.” I reach for my jacket near the door to the garage and the keys to the side by side. “Looks like there’s a car up near the shop.”

Morgan sets his beer on the kitchen island and stares out the window. “Maybe Pops is up there checking on the storm?”

“Doubt it. His old ass is probably dead asleep right now. I’m gonna head up there for a minute to check it out.”

He nods and grabs his own jacket. “I’ll come with you.”

The repair shop is near the main road on our property, within plain sight of my house, so I leave the girls sleeping. Probably frowned upon by most parents to do this, but having them out in thirteen-degree weather seems like an even worse decision on my part. And it’s two in the morning.

Inside the garage, I start up the side by side and grab a couple of flashlights. Sitting in the driver seat, I pull my beanie cap down over my ears and zip my jacket.

Hitting the garage door opener, Morgan retrieves two more beers from the fridge and sets them in the cup holders. “You can never be too prepared.”

I smile and turn the key, the engine rumbling to life. Just as we’re getting ready to pull out of the garage, I notice both girls standing in front of the vehicle dressed in their snow gear.

Morgan laughs, shaking his head. “Where’d they come from?”

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