I had not flown straight off the road and into the air and over the cliff when I turned the wheel of my truck to avoid hitting Betsy. I was still on the road. Barely.

“Rose!” I heard that voice again, a woman’s voice, scared but demanding, insistent, and I turned my head.

Betsy. There was Betsy in her car. My biological mother. The one who went to jail for ten years with Johnny.

I wanted to wave cheerily at her, but I was afraid to move. If I tilted the car forward, I’d go right over the cliff. It was then that I realized one more important fact, and it explained why Betsy was in her car and I was in mine but she seemed so close: Her car was imbedded into the side of my truck. I could see her. I could almost reach her, her window on the driver side halfway down.

“Don’t move, Rose!” she yelled at me, her voice pitched up in fear. “Wait until we stop moving. Don’t move!”

I closed my eyes in terror. We were so close. Finally we had met, finally she was here and I knew the truth, but our cars were smashed together. We were in my premonition. My probably-death premonition. I wondered if she’d had this premonition her whole life, too.

I looked into her eyes. Those gold eyes were the same as mine, and within that gold I saw her kindness, her goodness, and her panic. I knew what had happened. She had turned her car to save me. I had turned my truck to save her. We had crashed together, sacrificing ourselves, but at the same time causing an accident, temporarily saving us both.

My truck and her car finally balanced out. We were still a teeter-totter, but we were in the middle. We were mildly stabilized.

“Get out, Rose!” she yelled. “Get out now!”

I instinctively turned to grab the door handle, to escape this metal coffin, then stopped. What was keeping me from falling over was her car, smashed into mine. If I got out, my weight could shift this whole thing, these two hunks of metal sandwiched together. My truck and her car would tilt without my weight balancing things out, and the car and truck and Betsy would go tumbling over the cliff. I knew what happened then. I could almost feel the burning of the flames and smell the black smoke from my previous premonitions.

I took a deep breath, sadness filling my chest. I did not want to die. But I could not live with her death on my head. I had been ruined with guilt from Patsy. I could not take on guilt from Betsy. I shook my head. “No. You go,” I shouted back to her through our open widows. “You have a daughter.”

“No.” She was resolute, her chin set.