Mom, now in the front passenger seat, reaches through the foliage to high-five me. “There he is! There’s my corny son! Welcome back, my friend.”

I laugh. “Hey, I was just trying to branch out!”

“Now this is what I’m talking about! You feeling what I’m feeling, Andersons?” Dad says, starting the car. “Our love is at an al-pine high.”

Dad’s grinning. I know this because even with all these trees in the way, I can just barely see his eyes, his face, in the rearview mirror.

He sees me looking and he winks.

I wish I’d winked back.

Dad pulls the car onto the road. The car speakers ring, an incoming call. Dad fumbles with the phone controls, taps random buttons because he and tech, water and oil. And I see his head snap to his left, I see his eyes widen, the horror, his shoulders twitching as he reaches for the car horn, as his foot slams into the gas.

But both reactions are too late.

Whit screams. Four tires shrieking. Metal crumpling, folding, we fishtail across two lanes as our car origamis into something new.

But it’s the second impact that does the damage.

I don’t look out my window.

I don’t leave Dad’s eyes.

Their horror, abrupt and savage.

Like opening a door and finding fire.

We spin three and a half revolutions before the car finally stops.

Somewhere in the middle, I drop the camera.

But it keeps recording.

The impact jams the horn, and it’s hard to hear anything else—Jamal, are you okay? Jamal! Jamal!—the horn just keeps blaring that one awful note, long and loud.

We’re perpendicular to the road, our front end tipped into a drainage ditch.

Nine baby trees still fill our back seat.

Ten trees rocketed through the broken windshield, through the shattered driver’s and front passenger windows; when the firefighters slowly pull us out, I see them, dogwoods scattered across the road. I don’t know why I count them, but I do. It feels like it’ll be important later. Like maybe knowing things like how many trees or that it was 11:34 a.m. or that it had come down to Saturday or Sunday and we’d voted 3–1 Saturday because the weather was supposed to be perfect.

Not surprisingly, Whit voted for Sunday. She always chose the furthest date for everything. I like having something to look forward to for as long as possible, she said.

But now, sitting in the back of a yellow ambulance as the paramedics examine us, the pungent smell of antiseptic stinging my eyes and nose, all I see is fear on Whit’s face—her pain as bright as the red gash cut across her cheek.

They find five saplings seventy yards from the scene.

The last one?

It’s the only thing left in our front seat.