Plus, I’m screwed up. Hair-raising premonitions. People I have to save with, sometimes, only a few minutes to do so. A high dose of anxiety and depression that comes and goes that I have to fight. Sometimes that depression is based in sand and burning flames in a place far away. I also don’t want to leave the island again, which would be restricting for anyone. Who wants to live with a semi-hermit? I have deliberately let some people die without warning them what’s coming for them. He may well have a moral issue with that. I have an endless need to be alone to get my brain sorted out and my rampaging emotions evened out. I’m a book hoarder.

I could kill him, and I could make him miserable as his wife. I’m a real prize.

No, Marco is better off without me. That is not said as an irritating martyr. It’s said as truth.

Thinking about a life without Marco, or worse, thinking about life without Marco when he gets married and has children. . . well, that dumps me in an emotional gutter.

But it is what it needs to be.

I know that.

Chapter 32

Chapter 32

Betsy Baturra
Portland, Oregon
2012

Betsy saw the car crash premonition again when she was driving to the original Rose’s Market for a meeting.

The cliff was on her right, mountain on her left, the one-lane road curving. The sun behind her shone through the fir trees, the orange poppies almost glowing. She looked over the cliff, not liking how steep it was.

The other driver, in the blue truck, coming straight toward her on that one-lane road, swerved as she slammed on her brakes. Betsy swerved, too, away from the truck, but it was too late. The truck dove tailed and their head-on collision was a dead-on hit.

At first they wobbled together, like a teeter-totter at the edge of the cliff, then they both, at the same time, together, crashed over the side.

Betsy knew they were rolling as her car collapsed around her, the sides smashing in, the roof bending, her body thrown around under the seat belt, her head slamming into the airbag.

She thought they were taking more air for a second before her car rolled one more time. The crush of metal was louder than it had ever been, as if she were in a can that had been squished by a giant foot.

One of them died, she thought. Maybe both of them. There was an air of death amidst the cacophony of noise, the flames, the black smoke, and the shattering of glass.

But it was also unclear . . .

She gritted her teeth and went to the meeting at Rose’s Market.