After a few minutes, Graham said, “Elizabeth, I know this is very difficult. You’ve had to deal with being pre-sighted for far longer than most of us do. It’s a testament to your strength that you’re as sane and stable as you are.”

I nodded dully, not really feeling the compliment.

“But just think,” he continued, “real panic disorder can be treated, but sometimes it doesn’t go away. If that’s what you had, you might’ve struggled with it all your life. But that’s not going to happen to you. Your problem was situational, not biochemical. Your panic attacks are going to stop, now that all your senses are on the same page.”

“They’re going to stop?”

“Yes, almost certainly.”

“They’re going to stop.”

It was starting to sink in. They were going to stop.

I could date. I could go back to school.

I could leave Dorf.

Lost in a reverie of what my new, panic-free life might be like, I didn’t remember to broach the issue of Justine until we were more than halfway home.

“Graham, I know you’re checking with your contacts about my sister-in-law, but I wanted to ask you something else about that.”

“Yeah, what is it?”

Just at that moment, someone rear-ended us, hard. I was pressed back into my seat, and the fields around us lurched backwards. Then we slowed suddenly, and my seatbelt cut into me. Finally, there was a crunch-bang as we hit a highway sign post and the airbags deployed. We ended up in a ditch. The road sign, which helpfully told us that Dorf was fifteen miles away, was on our windshield.

I looked over at Graham, who groaned and rubbed his head. I saw he’d been wearing his seatbelt as well, thank god.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I think so,” he said. “You?”

“I’m okay. We’d better check on the other driver.”

Or drivers, plural, I thought. The road between Dorf and Wausau was four lanes. The moron who hit us could’ve caused a real pile-up.

Fortunately, the other driver wasn’t hurt, and hers was the only other vehicle involved. Some witnesses had pulled over and gotten her out of her car. By the time we walked up, she was sitting in someone else’s back seat, babbling about her accelerator getting stuck.

“Yeah, sure,” a guy standing next to me said under his breath. “Probably drunk.”

“In the middle of the day?” someone else said.

“Couple of years ago, everyone’s accelerator was getting stuck. Remember that?”

“Dang foreign cars,” a fourth person said.

The conversation continued as we waited for the police.