“Why haven’t you ever mentioned him?” he asked. “Dr. Palmer, I mean. He saved your life, and you’ve never said a word about him.”

Emma blew out a long breath. “I asked him to stay away from me.”

Nate was stunned. “Why?”

“I didn’t want to remember. Dr. Palmer felt bad for me, so he visited all the time. At first in the hospital, then at the foster house where I was staying. I started playing basketball for a while, just to keep busy, and he’d show up at my games. My foster parents encouraged him, but every time he showed up it just reminded me of that night. If I could go back and change what happened, I would. But I can’t. I couldn’t. And it was too hard to move on with him around.”

Nate tried to imagine how it would feel to be thirteen and lose your parents, to have your father die in your arms. He tightened his hold around Emma as the sound of her phone buzzing came from her purse. She bent to retrieve it, barely glancing at the screen before dropping it like she’d been scalded.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Yes. It’s the hospital.”

“But we’re here.”

“I mean, the clinic. It’s probably just Marjorie returning my call.”

Nate squinted at his wife. He got the distinct feeling that Emma wasn’t telling the truth. It was nothing specific, but there was something cagey about the way she shifted her gaze that gave Nate the telltale tingle he got when someone was lying to him. Yet her face was as inscrutable as ever.

It was just the pressure they were under, he told himself. Emma wouldn’t lie to him.

She pressed her cheek against his chest. “You know, I totally understand that the accident was no one’s fault,” she said after a minute. “Life’s too messy to attribute blame so neatly. You can’t blame a deer for jumping in front of a car. You can’t blame a kid for not knowing how to save someone’s life. There was no culpability, just fragments to pick up.”

She lifted her chin and met his gaze, her eyes clear as a summer sky. “But this… I can’t bear the thought of Josh dying because I didn’t do enough to save him.”

NATE WALKED outside the hospital for the first time in twenty-four hours. Autumn was sullenly sliding into winter, the bare branches cackling in the biting wind. The clouds were bloated with rain, the air smelling faintly of woodsmoke.

He climbed into his car, pointing it in the direction of home while putting the phone on hands-free and listening to a voice message. It was from his old high school buddy Jonathan Kellington, a manager at one of the banks in town.