Like when the article about the car accident appeared in the local paper. Anxiety dug its sharp claws into her, and this time it wasn’t just the increasingly familiar guilty conscience making its presence known. Something downright physical plunged her into a state of dizziness that almost tipped her off her chair. Her stomach was turning but, leaning on the kitchen counter, she was able to stagger to the sink to throw up the little food she had eaten.

He had been down there in the ravine for four days—four days trapped in a wrecked car, invisible to passersby under the thick blanket of snow. The article didn’t say whether death had been instant, but the whole thing was just awful. For his loved ones, it must have been four days of horrific torture, without any clue as to what had happened—whether he was alive and suffering or had already been torn away from them. And then, when it was over, the burden of the knowledge that a loved one had spent day after day in the cold and darkness without any chance of rescue. Even if he had perished immediately, it was shameful, inhuman for a dead person to spend days on end squashed inside a car covered in snow.

And Jeanette could have alleviated their suffering. Jeanette could have made life easier for his loved ones—in fact, she could have ensured he was saved. She had difficulty taking in the latter point; she didn’t want to believe it, couldn’t let herself believe it. But the thought was there, and she formulated the words, even if they wouldn’t take hold. The man was dead—beyond rescue. He must have been—that was her lifeline, because otherwise she didn’t want to live with herself any longer.

Then a few more days without any improvement, with even worse remorse. The loneliness was monumental, and she brushed up against the idea of suicide. She was exhausted, and her hopes of being able to climb out of this even with Peter’s help were fading away. And a future with Peter felt more and more remote as the days passed. She never saw him—was he still there? Or was he an unattainable dream that would never come true? A figment of her imagination that she could cling to until she went under?

One day she caught sight of the death notice in the newspaper. Unobtrusive but gripping, signed by just one person: his wife. The name of the victim wasn’t familiar to Jeanette, but she had been glancing through the deaths in all the local papers every day since the accident without finding anyone of the right age and with the right death day. But now she was convinced—it had to be him.