I’m surprised. Finn kept his car so clean that it became a joke on the soccer team. I call her back and get the address of the garage where his car was towed after the accident. They say I can come by today if that works for me, and it’s a task I want to get over with, so I head over.
The man leading me out to the lot seems to have no idea that tragedy has struck.
As he unlocks the gate, he turns to me and says, “Damage was minimal. You sure your mom wants to sell?”
I shrug.
I’m holding Finn’s key chain, one of the last things he ever touched. I squeeze it and think about time travel again. It would be so easy to save Finn’s life if it weren’t for time and space.
“So, uh, if you’re sure you don’t want us to fix her up, empty her out, and we’ll have you sign something for your mom in our office.”
I don’t bother correcting him before he walks away.
Finn’s little red car.
Like being in his house, I should have expected this flood of memories.
There’s the first time I saw this car: Finn, proud but embarrassed to be proud, driving me around the block once before dinner because my mom was only letting me go because she had a soft spot for Finn.
The late nights after a party, the early mornings before soccer practice.
Sometimes we bickered. Sometimes we laughed.
Mostly, we listened to music and didn’t realize that we had a limited time together.
Maybe if I had known that it would be this hard, I wouldn’t have come. But who would?
And then there’s the hole in the windshield.
Looking at it makes me feel like I saw Sylvie fly through it.
How did she live?
I remind myself that one life wasn’t exchanged for another. Had Sylvie died on impact, Finn would still have run to her, would still have been so anxious that he didn’t see the downed power line in the puddle next to Sylvie.
I take a deep breath and do what I came to do.
There isn’t much. I grab his stack of CDs and an umbrella from the front. From the trunk, I retrieve his jumper cables and first aid kit. There’re taco and candy wrappers in the back seat, which is a surprise bordering on shock. It’s only because of those wrappers that I look underneath the front seat.
Then I see the bag.
As I pull it out, even though I know it’s not drugs, the thought still crosses my mind, given it was concealed and wrapped so carefully.
It quickly becomes obvious why he had hidden the bag.
He’d said that he was running an errand before getting Sylvie.
He’d said he was “all the way sure” that Autumn loved him.
It also explains why there was trash in Finn Smith’s car.
Suddenly, I hate that girl so much. Autumn was the reason Finn was breaking up with Sylvie and driving in the rain. She was the reason he was distracted that night.
If he hadn’t been cheating on Sylvie the night before, Finn probably would have told her that they needed to go home, that they could talk on the phone the following day. But his guilt—his guilt over what Autumn had gotten him to do—had kept him out all night, even though it was getting late, even though it was raining hard and he hated driving in the rain.
If you took Autumn out of the equation, Finn would still be alive.
With a paper sack full of the meager items left in Finn’s little red car, I leave the garage and call Finn’s mom. She asks if I can come by, so I drive to Finn’s house.
She looks thinner and like she hasn’t been sleeping well, but Angelina’s smile is genuine. She opens the screen door for me, and I go into the foyer. I normally wouldn’t have gone so long without seeing her. I can’t remember the last time that a week went by without me being at Finn’s house. Hugging Angelina feels natural, even though it was something we never did when he was alive.
“Thank you,” she says. “I hope that wasn’t too much to ask.”
“No,” I say. “I’m glad to help. There was an umbrella in the car that had French words printed on it. I thought that was probably Sylvie’s, but I brought the rest of the stuff.” I hand her the paper sack.
She looks inside it for a moment. “Would you listen to the CDs, Jack?”
I nod. “Thank you.”
She hands me the stack of CDs and then takes out the first aid kit. She holds it tenderly in her hands. A shadow crosses her face. “If only,” she whispers. And I understand.
If only this could have somehow saved him. If only his cautious nature had somehow saved him.
“At first,” she says, still looking at it, “I thought I would be the sort of parent who turned their child’s room into a museum, leaving every object exactly as he left it, right down to the jeans on the floor, you know?”