“Will you tell me about the accident?” I asked, my voice nearly a whisper.
His chest lifted with each breath. “You sure you want to know?”
I thought a minute. “I was there. It feels like I should.”
He got up and once again sat across from me. Took a drink of bourbon, then gave me a little smile. “Liquid courage.” He leaned back in the chair and sighed. “What do you remember?” he asked.
“I remember you picking me up in your truck.” The smell of coffee, and mud. “You asked me a couple questions. I remember feeling . . . safe. Your truck smelled like my dad’s. And that’s about it. I think I fell asleep, or . . . or I just blocked out the rest.”
He nodded. “Yep. Well, when I saw you walking, I figured something happened to you. It didn’t take a genius to tell you’d had a rough night. I thought maybe you’d—” He shook his head. “I thought maybe you’d crashed your car.”
“How’s that for irony?” I said, curling up so Zeus could have more room.
Ben looked out the window. “So we were driving along, and you were quiet. And . . .” It was clearly hard for him to revisit this night as well. I wondered if he’d had anyone to talk to. My father, maybe. “I was speeding. Doing about sixty, sixty-five.”
That was twenty miles an hour above the speed limit. Easy to imagine that late at night, when no one else was on the road.
“Then the tire blew, and we swerved across the westbound lane. I tried straightening us out, but I was going too fast. The truck went through the guardrail at Blackfish Creek.” He stopped for a minute and turned his eyes to me. He took a drink, then another. “You doing okay, hearing this?”
I nodded.
“Tell me to stop if it gets to be too much.”
“Keep going.”
He gave a slight nod. “We hit the marsh and the truck rolled. It was weird . . . it felt like I had all the time in the world to think. ‘Oh, shit, this will be bad, all this noise, are we ever gonna stop, is Lillie okay, what is all this shit flying around.’ That kind of thing. If the tide had been higher, we would’ve hit the water and probably would’ve been better off. But the tide was about halfway in, so there was still plenty of land for us to hit, which is why we rolled.”
I knew the spot well, of course. Passed it nearly every day. Blackfish Creek was more of a marsh with a tidal river in it. It boasted an unfettered view toward the bay, utterly breathtaking, a spot beloved by photographers and artists.
Ben took a deep breath and continued. “So we finally come to a stop, and we’re on the roof of the truck, which was completely smashed in, and the dashboard . . . it didn’t even look like a dashboard. It was just wires and twisted metal and plastic. But I was hanging upside down, so I knew I was still buckled in. Then the truck flopped down on the passenger side. Your side.”
His voice broke a little, and I did what I always did when people were struggling . . . I offered him food. “Here. Snickerdoodles make life better.” My hands were shaking, but only a little.
Ben gave a short huff of a laugh, took the cookie and set it on his napkin. Zeus lifted his head, offended that Ben got a cookie when he was lying right there, so I gave him one, too, which he chewed delicately, then let his big head fall back into my lap.
“So, uh, it was so . . . quiet after all that noise, and I was kind of trapped, with the steering wheel being in my lap, and the roof knocked in. I had no idea where my phone was, so I couldn’t call for help. I asked you if you were okay, and you didn’t answer, and then I . . . I realized how bad it was. My door didn’t open, so I kicked out the windshield, which was shattered, undid my seat belt, climbed out and fell right in the water, because the tide was coming in hard and fast. And you were . . . shit. Give me a minute.”
He got up abruptly and went out the front door. No outside lights were on; I could only see him in silhouette. He leaned forward, hands on his knees, as if he’d just finished a long run, his breath fogging in the cold air. After a minute or two, he came back in, added a log to the fire, and took his seat once again.
“Your side of the truck was in the water a good few inches. And I thought, in this weird, calm way, ‘She’s gonna drown, so get her out of there right now.’ I had to put something—a box from the back of my truck—under your head to keep it out of the water. I couldn’t tell if you were even alive.” He took an unsteady breath. “And while this one part of me could see the technical problems of getting you out, the other was . . . I was screaming for help. Calling your name.”