Page 333 of The Lies We Play

The tachometer goes red.

The deceleration barely deserves the name. The hill slows us more than the engine does, the hill and the rain and whatever mercy lives in physics when prayer has no jurisdiction.

The curve is coming.

The curve is coming, and it’s a curve I’ve driven in dry weather at posted speeds, not at sixty-eight in the rain with no brakes.

The two cars are behind me again.

I see them in the rearview.

Pulling up.

One on each side.

Trying to put me into the guardrail before the curve does it for them.

I think: It doesn’t matter who hits us.

I think: It only matters that she lives.

I think: Creed.

The car on my left taps the rear quarter panel.

Light.

Almost gentle.

A touch a driver gives when he wants you to know he’s been there the whole time and could’ve been worse.

The rear end goes.

I correct, but not enough.

The car begins to rotate around its own center, and the world outside the windshield becomes rain and pine and headlights and guardrail. Somewhere inside all of it is the curve I memorized this morning. Somewhere beside me is the woman I love. Somewhere through a phone on a center console that has slid sideways with everything else is the man I love, saying my name over and over.

Hal Hal Hal Hal.

The way a person says a name when there’s nothing else left to say.

I take one hand off the wheel.

I have one second.

I use it to put my hand on the side of Livia’s face.

Her cheek under my palm.

Her eyes finding mine for one half second before impact.

Her mouth shaping a word I won’t remember for ten years.

The word is my name.

Then the guardrail.

Then the rotation.