She looked out the window, at a spring day full of watery sunlight and pale skies, and thought of Ethan, pictured him, Claire and Maisie at the kitchen table in their blue clapboard house in Oakland. She thought of the last time she’d been there with them for Christmas, how there had been so much laughter, so many times she’d held Maisie, or talked to Claire, and thought how lucky she was; so many times she’d sat and watched the outline of Ira in Ethan’s face and actions, and had to pause for breath to appreciate how blessed she was to have the family she did. In her quiet moments at night, alone in the bedroom they’d made up for her, Jo tried not to think about how different it might have been if Ira hadn’t died, not only because his death still hurt, even all these years on, but because there was a side to his passing that was hard to ignore: without it, she might have lost her son completely. And so the worst thing that had ever happened to her in her life had also made her better. It made those moments with Ethan possible, even so long after Ira’s passing, because Ethan remembered her being there for him, all the way along. But she’d only been there because Ira suddenly wasn’t.

It was something that she’d never quite reconciled.

Something brought her out of the moment, a twinge in her thigh, and when she checked the side of her pants there was a speck of blood on them. Confused, she looked out at the motorway, saw the signs for the service station pass them, and then she turned to Kevin Quinn. As she did, her vision spotted white, smearing and dimming.

‘I’m sorry,’ Quinn said.

She touched her thigh again.

‘What’s going on?’

And then she saw that he only had his right hand on the wheel. His other was at his side, his knuckles resting against the edge of his seat, a syringe inside his palm.

‘What the hell have you done?’ Jo said, her words slurred.

‘I’m sorry,’ Quinn said again. ‘I’m so sorry.’

For some reason, before the blackness, images of Ethan when he was a boy, of her standing in the doorway of his room looking in at his crib, blinked in front of her.

Her heart swelled with love for him.

For who he was, and who he’d become.

And then she slumped sideways against the door.

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