Accident

“It wasn’t your fault, you know?”

“Yeah. I know.”

I pushed myself upright, trembling as the orange glow flickered across my face. The air tasted like metal and smoke. A few feet away my car lay twisted in on itself, a heap barely recognizable as something I’d once driven. I crossed the street, each step heavier than the last. Then I heard it: a low, broken groan. The wreckage rose before me like a mausoleum, beckoning me toward grief, and I began tearing at the hot metal with shaking hands.

There she was, my beloved, cocooned within the mangled frame and spreading flame. Her eyes searched for mine, glistening as her tears evaporated.

“I love you,” she whispered, and her eyes slid shut.

I threw myself at the burning pile, pulling, clawing, ripping at anything I could reach. The heat consumed my palms. My skin blistered, nerve endings begging for release, but I did not stop. I couldn’t tell where the wreckage ended and she began, but I had to get her out.

I hooked my arms beneath hers and pulled, hard. Nothing moved. I pulled again. The fire roared in my ears and the world narrowed to a pinprick. Something tore. Metal. It had to be metal.

I remembered nothing of the walk home. Only the weight in my arms while her head rested beneath my chin just as it had when I carried her over the threshold of our bedroom seven years ago on our wedding night.

I pulled her favorite chair next to my side of the bed and sat her in it upright. “There you go,” I told her. She looked back at me with the eyes I prayed our child would inherit, I could see the smile I loved so dearly. I would have to get her chair professionally cleaned.

“You didn’t see the other driver.”