“A deer in the headlights. Isn’t that something? That’s not the last thing I saw, though. It’s like, I knew we were about to get slammed by an eighteen-wheeler, and somehow I had the presence of mind to think, Keep your knees down, so I wouldn’t break my legs. Is that even a thing? I feel like I saw it in some awful Driver’s Ed video, where a dummy’s legs get smashed because its plastic feet were on the dash. I bet somebody’s mom wrote in that part to scare kids into keeping filthy shoes off the glove compartment, right? Well, it worked, because I thought, Keep your knees down, Elizabeth, and I wanted to have a whole conversation with Shae, but there wasn’t enough time to say even a single word, and I don’t know what I would have said anyway. So I turned my head and tried to tell her everything with my eyes—and I don’t know if this is even possible, like scientifically, but I swear, Robert, I swear I kept my eyes open the whole time. I was staring at Shae and I remember thinking, Don’t take your eyes off her, Elizabeth. As if me bearing witness would empower her to activate some magical survival skills or something. Just, Don’t you dare look away. And I didn’t, not through the whole thing. She closed her eyes, though. At the moment of impact, she closed her eyes.”

I’d never heard that part of the story, and I’m thoroughly horrified, but I’m also preoccupied, because how am I to know which would be more inappropriate: asking Elizabeth to keep her voice down, or letting her carry on like this in public?

“That always gave me a little comfort, to be honest with you. I’m glad the last thing she saw was the inside of her eyelids rather than an airbag or shrapnel in her thigh.”

I reach across the table and grab her hand and squeeze it very hard, hoping to pinch her back to the moment.

“You want to know the dumbest part?” she asks. Her speech has started to slur.

“I think we should talk about this later,” I say.

But she’s in her own world in her head, so my answer doesn’t matter, and she goes and tells me the dumbest part anyway. “I didn’t even like the Dead. Neither did Shae. We’d never been fans and wouldn’t have even considered going to that show if Tonya hadn’t been out of town.”

I mimic the tone used by crisis counselors in movies, characters who successfully talk maniacs down from a ledge, when I ask, “Who’s Tonya again?”