Wrong Mail

Prologue

Two years ago

Oregon

I'm not sure I'll make it.

The rain claws at the glass like it means to get inside the car.

The wipers thrash at full speed and still can't keep up.

For half a second the road appears, black and streaming, then the water closes over it again and the world is gone.

My headlights barely reach past the rain, catching silver needles and the pines crowding in on both sides.

My heart pounds in my chest.

I lean forward over the wheel. My knuckles have gone white. My palms are slick on the leather and I can hear myself breathing, quick and shallow, under the drum of the storm.

The phone is in the cupholder. The signal is gone again.

Of course it is.

I focus on the road, then tap the screen. One bar, then none. I've been trying to find stable reception for what feels like forever, but every time it flickers back, it's gone before I can use it.

I need to reach someone.

The thought is urgent, and underneath it is the reason I'm out here in the first place, the thing pushing me faster through the rain.

I glance down. My thumb slips off the glass.

The speedometer says I'm going too fast for this. I know I am, but I have no choice.

I press harder on the gas anyway.

The river runs beside me on the right, swollen and loud enough to hear through the closed windows.

The guardrail flickers past in the corner of my eye, a broken silver stitch.

I take the next curve and the back of the car floats, just slightly, the tires letting go of the road before they catch again.

For a second, I forget to breathe.

“What the…”

Something appears through the blur of rain. It’s a pale shape caught in the headlights. At first, my mind can’t make sense of it.

A woman is standing in my lane with both hands raised against the light, her mouth open. Rain has slicked her dark hair against her face, and her clothes cling to her body. Her skin looks almost white, like she’s already been pulled from the water.

Her eyes find mine through the windshield.

There's no time.

I jerk the wheel to avoid her. The car swings hard right. The tires scream on the wet road.

Then I hit her.

There’s a soft, terrible give against the front of the car. I feel it in my chest before I hear it.

A sound tears out of me that isn’t a word.

The guardrail rushes at me and doesn't hold. It buckles on impact, and the road disappears beneath the car.

The car pitches forward.

The headlights sweep across black water.

Then the river hits.

Water crashes over the hood and windshield with a deafening roar as the impact throws me against the belt. My head snaps sideways into something hard, pain flashing white behind my eyes while the dashboard glows green beneath the rising water.

Then everything goes dark.

I come back in pieces.

There's a hand on my face. Gloved, blue, wiping at my forehead, and a voice above me saying words I can't quite put together.

"Ma'am. Can you hear me? Ma'am, stay with me."

Rain touches my cheeks, cold and thin. I'm outside. Somehow, I'm not in the water anymore.

I don't understand how that's possible.

I'm on my back. The grass is wet under my fingers. The smell of mud fills my whole head. Red and blue lights flicker through the trees somewhere close, catching the rain and throwing it back in bursts, and every burst hurts.

"Stay with me," the voice says. "You were in a car accident. Do you remember?"

I don't remember much of anything.

I turn my head, which takes everything I have. Beyond the reach of the lights there's a moving darkness that must be the river. People at the edge of it are in yellow slickers. Further up the bank there are more lights, blurred by rain and moving bodies.

"My wife's a nurse," another voice says to someone, off to the side. "I stopped when I saw the car swerve into the guardrail. I pulled her out of the river, then called it in. I didn't see the other person till I was already out of my truck. She was just there in the road."

The other person?

"The female up the bank is DOA," the first voice says, low, not to me. "This one's the driver. Let's get her boarded."

DOA.

I know what it means.

No. That can't be right.

I reach for what happened, and my mind closes around empty air. I try to remember getting into the car. I try to remember where I was going. The reason that burned so bright before the crash, the reason I had to reach someone. It's gone. All of it. A room in me has been shut and locked.

"Ma'am, what's your name? Can you tell me your name?"

I know my name. I hold onto it like the last dry thing, and I give it to him.

"Good," he says. "That's real good. Do you know what day it is?"

I don't.

"Do you remember what happened tonight?"

"I don't know." My voice comes out in pieces. "I can't remember."

The medic looks at someone I can't see. I know what that look means even if I don't know how I know.

My throat closes.

They lift me and the board is hard against my spine. The straps come across my chest, and I think of the belt, the bite of it. My breath goes ragged again.

As they carry me up the slope toward the lights, I turn my face, because I can't help it. I look past the man walking beside me, toward the mud and grass at the edge of the road.

All I see is a hand, pale on the dark ground, palm up, fingers curled loosely toward the sky as if she fell asleep reaching for something. Rain gathers in her palm and spills over. The fingers don't move.

"Was she in the car?" I whisper. "The other one. Was she with me?"

"No," the medic says. "You were the only one inside."

Then someone passes between us, and the dark comes up over me the way the water did, taking me under again.