“I just…” He exhaled slowly. “I had a lot of déjà vu tonight.”
My chest tightened.
“You did?”
He nodded once.
Then his gaze drifted past the television to a photo on a shelf beside it. A family portrait of Alisha, Charlotte, and him—probably taken a month or so before the accident.
When he finally spoke again, his voice was quieter. “I haven’t felt that kind of panic since… that night.”
“What night?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I knew what he was talking about.
He swallowed, licking his lips.
“Since the night Alisha died.”
24
THEO
TWO YEARS EARLIER
It waseleven thirty when my phone rang from where I’d left it on the corner of my desk.
The office was quiet except for the low hum of the fluorescent lights. Marked-up contracts were spread out in front of me.
Alisha.
I smiled when I answered, sliding a merger agreement out of the way.
“Hey.”
“I’m tired,” she said.“Talk to me so I don’t fall asleep.”
She’d been visiting her parents. Driving home after a long weekend away. Charlotte was in the backseat, probably asleep by now.
“Put me on speaker,” I told her.“I’ll keep you entertained.”
We talked the way we always did when one of us was driving late. About nothing. About everything.
About the way Charlotte had started wobbling from the couch to the coffee table without holding on.
About how she’d laughed every time she dropped her sippycup, like the concept of gravity was the funniest thing she’d ever seen.
About booking our trip to Bali now that Charlotte was finally done nursing—dreaming of a week where we might actually sleep through the night.
It was completely ordinary.
The kind of conversation you assumed you’d have a thousand more times.
But then?—
A sound. A screech.
Metal folding in on itself.
Her breath catching sharp and wrong.