CHAPTER 6 What I Left in the Snow

Richard POV

I woke to the smell of antiseptic and the sound of a machine counting out my own heartbeat.

For a few seconds I did not remember anything. Then it came back all at once, the ice, the headlights, the shape of a woman in the snow with her hand raised against the glare, and I tried to sit up so fast the room tilted sideways.

"Easy, Mr. Brooks." A nurse pressed a firm hand to my shoulder. "You have a concussion and a cracked rib. You need to stay still."

"Where is she?"

"Who?"

"My wife. Eva Brooks. She was on the road. She was right there."

The nurse's face changed, just slightly, and she looked toward the door instead of at me. "The police would like to speak with you. I will let them know you are awake."

I did not like the way she said it. I did not like the way she would not meet my eyes.

Two officers came in a few minutes later, one older and heavy, the other young enough that he kept glancing at the floor. The older one introduced himself and then stood there a moment, hat in hand, as if the next part was a weight he had to set down carefully.

"Mr. Brooks, I am very sorry to tell you this. Your wife did not survive the collision."

I heard the words but couldn't get any meaning out of the words spoken.

"That is not possible," I said. "She was walking. I saw her."

"You were unconscious when the first responders arrived, sir. There was a great deal of blood at the scene. By the time we reached her, she had already been pronounced dead."

"Where is she? I want to see her."

"Her body has been taken to the county morgue. We ask that family wait for the formal identification." He cleared his throat. "Given the weather and the road conditions, it is being treated as a tragic accident."

An accident. I almost laughed. I turned my head away and stared at the white wall until the shapes blurred, because if I looked at either of them I would say something I could not take back.

They left eventually. The room went quiet except for the machine, and the truth I had been refusing to look at finally stood up and faced me.

I had not been driving carefully. After she walked out of my study, I sat there for ten minutes with that signed folder in front of me, and something in me came apart. I told myself I only wanted to stop her, to tell her to wait until morning, to say whatever it was I could not name. I grabbed my keys and followed her down that road far too fast, angry at her for leaving, angry at myself for wanting her to stay, and I never once thought about the snow.

I killed her. The last thing she ever saw of me was my face behind the glass.

My phone sat on the table beside the bed, cracked down the middle. It lit up with Valerie's name, then again, then again. I let it ring until it stopped.

Marta came that afternoon. She stood at the foot of my bed with her coat still buttoned, her eyes red, and held out my wedding ring in its little black box.

"I found this on her dresser," she said. "She left it for you."

I could not take it. I looked at that small gold circle and thought of every night I had come home late and never asked how her day had been.

"Mr. Brooks," Marta said quietly. "She was kind to everyone in that house. Even to you."

I turned my face to the wall.

Valerie came on the second evening, dressed in black, as though she had been waiting for the occasion. She sat on the edge of my bed and took my hand before I could pull it away.

"I am so sorry, Richard. I cannot imagine how terrible this is for you."

I looked at her and noticed that the expression on her face was not the one full of grief.

"You do not have to pretend with me," she said softly. "We both know the marriage was a mistake. This is a tragedy, but it also means you are free. You can finally stop punishing yourself for what your grandfather did to you."

"She was carrying my child, Valerie."

Her expression changed for a while. "Of course. I only meant that you were never at fault. It was an accident. Let it stay one."

Let it stay one.

When she left, her perfume lingered in the room long after the door closed. I lay there staring at the ceiling, and for the first time in years I wondered why she was so eager for me to stop asking questions.

It was close to midnight when something began to nag at me, the way a splinter works its way to the surface. I lay awake replaying that night frame by frame, and somewhere between the headlights and the white flash there was something I had pushed to the back of my mind.

A man.

I had seen him through my cracked windshield just before the darkness took me. A tall figure kneeling in the snow beside her, his hands at her throat. He had looked up at me once. Only once.

The police had mentioned first responders. They had said nothing about anyone who was there before them.

At dawn, I asked my lawyer to bring me the preliminary police report. He hesitated, but he brought it. I read it twice with my hands going cold.

The report listed the time Eva was pronounced dead as 11:42 p.m.

The emergency call from the scene was logged at 11:58.

Sixteen minutes. Someone had declared my wife dead before anyone had ever been called to find her.

I read the line again, and again. Then I turned to the last page, to the space at the bottom beside the word *attending*.

There was no title. No license number. No hospital. Only a single name, written in dark, steady ink.

*Julian.*

I had never heard that name in my life.

I asked my lawyer who he was, and h

e went very quiet.

"Richard," he said slowly, "no one at that hospital has ever heard of him.”