“Okay,” I repeat, though it’s a lie. At my body’s insistence, I slept hard, but not comfortably. The accident kept repeating in my dreams in weird variations. Always me hurting Marina, but with the details altered. A black sky. A red dress. One car instead of two. The whole town watching. In one version, I rammed my truck into their wedding. In another, I took her home with me to hide what I’d done. In another, she died. In another, I kissed her.

My hand rolls over my stubbled head. “Mom, can I get this to go?”

Before she answers, Gil strolls in, his headset slightly askew over his ears. He nods toward me and heads to the fridge.

“You should stay here for a few days,” Mom says. “It’d be good for you to be with family.”

“Oooh, Call of Duty?” Gil says, lighting up as he flicks open a soda.

“No, I’m spent.”

“You’ve been asleep for twelve hours,” he says.

He’s right, but I still feel exhausted. “The body must what the body must, Gil.”

He shrugs and disappears down the hall.

Mom’s phone rings, and glancing at the caller on her screen, her smile fails her, and she hesitates. It’s probably someone angling for details about yesterday from her book club, her pickleball team, or the Women’s Club. Mom has her hand in nearly every organization in this town, as awful as that sounds.

Seagrove’s gossip game is Olympic-level—the town is full of bored busybodies who’ve trained their whole lives for news like this, not that I can blame them. The prince of Sunny’s Beach Market left at the altar because his sweetheart bride was stabbed in a car accident caused by the town’s asshole vet with zero bedside manner? TMZ has wet dreams about headlines like that. Or, at least, The Seagrove Groove does.

“Let it go to voicemail,” I breathe out. “That’s what it’s for.”

Her cheeks puff in a sigh before she answers. “Hey… oh, yes… he’s fine, thanks for—oh, I don’t know the details. I wasn’t there.” She moves her call into the living room.

I glance at Dad, suddenly worried that Mom knows the extent of Marina’s injuries through Dad and my weepy confession yesterday. “Did you tell her about the, um… the whole story?”

“No, son. That’s between us, and it’s Marnie’s business, anyway.”

“Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

Marigold doesn’t bother questioning us. She doesn’t enjoy intrigue.

“Sorry, I didn’t help this morning,” I tell him.

“Glad you didn’t. I’m hiring more farmhands. You’re doing too much, Grady. It stops. Now.”

“I appreciate that, but now, I need to work. To think of anything else. Tell me about that colicky baby calf.”