At turns hilarious and gut-wrenching, this is a tremendously fun slow burn

We’ll come get the Volvo this weekend.
I wonder what ever happened to it.
Dad kept one giant hand on the steering wheel and the other curled around my fingers.
He glanced at me every five seconds or so, no doubt wishing he had Mom’s list right there on the
dashboard, to reference the The first time a boy breaks her heart… advice. I knew where to find it. Number
thirty-two.
His eyes were worried, brows drawn… As much as I hated what had happened with Elliot, I loved the
warmth of Dad’s attention on me, the reassuring contact of his hand, the quiet questions – what did I want
for dinner? Did I want to go to a movie, or stay home?
But his attention on me meant it wasn’t on the road.
I’m not even sure he ever saw the car. It was a blue Corvette, merging from the onramp and already
going too fast. Sixty, maybe even seventy. It cut in front of us in the slow lane, screeching into the
narrowing space between us and the eighteen-wheeler ahead. The Corvette’s tires skittered, his back end
jerked to the side, and his brake lights went a brilliant red, right there. Right in front of us.
Was there a point when it wasn’t too late? This is what I always asked myself. Could I have
communicated something more than a garbled “Dad!” and a pointed finger?
Witnesses told police they thought the whole thing happened in fewer than five seconds, but it would
forever happen in slow motion in my memory: I still feel Dad’s worried eyes on me, not the Corvette. This
was why he didn’t even touch his brakes. We came on it so fast, with a deafening clash of metal, and our
bodies jerked forward, airbags burst out, and I thought for a fraction of a second that it was okay. The
impact was over.
Except we hadn’t landed yet. When we did, it was a bruising of the driver’s side against asphalt, a
screaming twenty feet of sparking metal. We came to a stop on our sides. My forehead ended up near the
steering wheel. My seat had crushed Dad’s, with him still in it.
Later, I’d find out that the other driver was a student from Santa Rosa Junior College. His name was Curt

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Anderssen, and he walked away with a slight abrasion to his neck. Not from the seat belt – he wasn’t even
wearing one – but from the fabric of the passenger seat, where he was launched when his car spun
sideways through three lanes of traffic.
Curt was unconscious at first, I think, and most of the activity focused on the far more gruesome reality
of our car. I was already on the stretcher with a broken arm when Curt emerged, stoned out of his mind and
laughing at his survival, until he was shocked into sobriety by the scene before him and the police with
their handcuffs.
I’ve heard people say that they don’t remember what happened immediately after being told of the death
of a loved one, but I remember everything. I remember, acutely, the way my broken arm hung like a sack of
bones at my side. I remember the feeling of wanting to claw my skin off, of wanting to run, because running
would somehow undo what the paramedics told me.
Yes, he’s gone.
Sweetheart, I need you to calm down.
I’m so sorry. We’re going to take you down to Sutter, honey. You need a doctor. You need to breathe.
I remember asking over and over for them to take it back, to do more CPR, to let me try to revive him.
“Wait.”
“Macy, I need you to try to breathe. Can you breathe for me?”
“Stop talking!” I screamed. “Everyone stop talking!”
I have an idea: We can start over.
Let’s get back in the car, go back to the house. I just need a second to think.
We’ll stay there tonight.
Or, no, let’s go back further.
I won’t forget to call in the first place.
I want to go back to that other heartbreak, not this one.