Page 26 of To Belong Together
He turned on his blinker for Fox Light Lane. When he got home, he’d take the dogs for a nice long walk, clear his head. He took his foot off the gas to apply the brake for the turn, and the wheels slammed into one last big bump.
The car veered right, jerking the wheel toward the ditch where the twisted limbs of a gnarled oak reached toward the street.
He hit the brakes and steered to correct.
The car didn’t respond. In what felt like slow-motion, the vehicle pivoted around the right front wheel, spinning off the pavement.
The steep ditch seemed to roar as it engulfed the sedan. The trees wouldn’t catch the fall softly. The car might flip first.
A vehicle had never felt like such a vulnerable place, all the windows, a house of glass. Even the metal was as likely to kill him as protect him.
Jesus.
The one-word prayer shot through his mind but not out of his mouth before impact.
Erin’s workboots splashed in puddles as she crossed the dentist’s office parking lot to her car on Tuesday morning. She hated starting her workday late, but it was hard to be crabby when a second sunny, relatively warm day in a row meant winter was finally breaking.
She turned up the radio for the drive to work, inadvertently blaring an Awestruck song. She reached to spin the dial back down, but her fingers curled against her palm at the last moment. Gannon Vaughn sang about a friend lost to suicide. Did the lyrics stem from personal experience, or had they bought this off a songwriter? Regardless, it was hard to imagine the drummer was the man she’d met, the one who somehow seemed to know her while claiming she didn’t know him.
She couldn’t argue with his point. She hadn’t even known the guy’s job, and now that she did, the information raised more questions than answers.
The song faded, and she inhaled with relief as the DJ came on.
“That’s Awestruck’s ‘One Man Left Behind.’ We’ll keep you updated as more information comes in, but in the meantime, our thoughts and prayers are with the band and with drummer John Kennedy.”
“Scary stuff,” a second morning show host chimed in. “Definitely wishing him a full and fast recovery.”
Erin’s head bumped against the rest as she tried to piece that one together.
Instead of providing more information, the discussion moved on to other topics. Had the station received a bogus report? Or had something happened to John? Erin flipped through all the presets on her radio but didn’t find anyone else talking about John until she pulled into Hirsh Auto.
A station started the local news.
“Awestruck drummer John Kennedy was involved in a single-car accident around six last night. Kennedy was cut out of the vehicle by emergency responders and taken to Grace Medical Center for treatment. Lead singer Gannon Vaughn posted around one a.m. that Kennedy was in stable condition, but Vaughn requested prayer for the doctors and for Kennedy, who has not yet been released from the hospital. The wreck is under investigation, but drugs and alcohol were not believed to be factors.”
The report moved on to other stories, and Erin pressed the button to silence the noise.
John had been seriously hurt.
She’d seen him so recently.
He’d avoided an accident on their test drive in bad conditions, but now he’d been in a single-car wreck? And hospitalized?
She spent a few minutes on a fruitless search for information on her phone, then proceeded inside. As she passed his door, Uncle Nick called her into his wood-paneled office. Probably had some customer car to discuss with her, as if she could focus on work right now.
But when she stepped into the office, Roy and Sam stood by the desk, expressions dark.
Uneasiness rolled in her gut as Uncle Nick sank into his chair and leafed through a pile of paperwork. “Did you work on John Kennedy’s brakes?”
“No.” Her mind spun to connect his question with the little she’d gleaned from the radio. “He took it to Rodney’s. They told him the brakes caused the noise.” She angled to see the paperwork in Nick’s hands. Invoices. “His brakes caused the accident?”
Roy loomed over her shoulder. “You’d better hope it was nothing you did.”
She took a step away, mentally running through the records of work. Shortly after college, she’d made a mistake that had killed a transmission. From that, she’d learned to not let the routine lull her into forgetfulness. She had a specific order she followed strictly to ensure sound work, especially with parts as vital as brakes.
Why was she scrambling to reassure herself? She hadn’t touched his brakes.
“What happened?” She pointed the question at Uncle Nick. “Why do they think it was the brakes?”
