She wanted to slide quietly back into what was left of her old life, but that door was closed. There was no “quietly.” Everyone wanted to know who she was and what she’d been doing in the car with Cliff.

No one had ever been interested in her, but suddenly everyone was interested.

The doctors, the police, the media—

She felt the beginnings of panic and concentrated on her breathing while she stared at the pictures of Joanna Whitman. How did she stand having cameras pushed in her face? How did she survive it?

Ashley knew everything there was to know about Cliff’s ex-wife. Thanks to the internet, she’d searched, read, filed away the information until she felt she knew Joanna Whitman personally. She knew that she’d grown up in a small town on the Californian coast, that her mother had died when Joanna was born and that her father had remarried when Joanna was eight. She’d lost her father two years later and, according to gossip, she and her stepmother were estranged. It all seemed horribly sad to Ashley, who had enjoyed a very happy, uncomplicated childhood until her father’s death.

How had Joanna coped? Ashley had read about every one of Cliff’s infidelities, scrutinized the pictures of the women he’d had affairs with. She knew about Joanna’s miscarriage, and how heartbroken she’d been. She’d read about it, along with the rest of the world, and seen the pictures of her looking thin and strained. Life happened to people, Ashley knew that now, and often you had no control over the bad things. But life had happened to Joanna Whitman in full view of the public gaze, which must have made everything so much worse. Ashley wouldn’t have wanted anyone to witness the state she’d been in when her mother had died. Emotions that raw weren’t for public consumption.

How was Joanna reacting to Cliff’s death? Had she seen the latest story on the news? Did she know Ashley was pregnant?

Ashley felt her face burn with shame at the thought of adding more crap to Joanna’s already crappy life. Joanna probably wished that Ashley had been killed in that crash, too.

Feeling guilty, she hauled herself to the bathroom and then limped back to the bed. Her side was killing her. It hurt to breathe. The bruise on her head still throbbed. Exhausted from the effort required to simply walk across the room, she sank onto the edge of the bed, legs shaking. They’d taken out the drips and drains, but she felt ridiculously weak. She worried endlessly about the baby even though the doctors had assured her everything was fine.

She wanted to get out of here. She wanted to leave the hospital and go back to a life of anonymity. She wanted to put this whole episode behind her, but she had more than herself to worry about.