Tim stepped forward, closer to her.

“What are you doing?” Robert, who was awkwardly getting up from the road, said.

“Someone has to check,” Tim said, almost calmly. “If she’s still alive, we have to get her to a hospital.” Tim walked to her, crossing the scene into reality. The woman’s face was mercifully pointed away from them, but now Tim’s eyes lit up—not in a good way—as he rounded her and looked down upon her in all her rotten glory. “Jesus,” he muttered. He crouched down and took a finger and placed it on her neck.

That moment seemed to last forever. Edmund watched as Tim waited, his finger perched under her chin. Edmund hoped against hope. This couldn’t be happening. He had so much he was going to achieve. He would lose the world and the world would lose him.

Tim withdrew his hand and stood up. “She’s dead.”

A fresh sob escaped Pru, Robert let out a distinct moan, and Edmund’s world started to spin. Only Tim and Rachel remained totally silent, regarding each other in the way they often did. They were having a silent conversation, communicating in the way only twins could do.

Edmund’s legs failed him, and he fell backward onto his arse with a whump. Dead. She was dead. He had run over someone and she was dead. He was a murderer. He clawed his way to the roadside and threw up again. There was nothing anymore. What happened in that split second would define him forever. A slight slip in concentration and a life was gone, and another life was ruined. What was he going to do now? Wherever could he go? He would forever be the man who killed a woman while he was drunk.

“Get up,” Tim said, and Edmund looked up. Tim was standing over him with his hand outstretched. The same hand he had used to touch the woman. Edmund shook his head, so Tim reached out and grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him to a standing position again. “Keep it together.”

Edmund scoffed. “Keep it together? Don’t you get what’s just happened? Or are you still five parts pissed?”

Tim breathed in and out. He exuded a sense of silence and calmness that was almost infectious. “I know what happened. And I’m sorry it did. But we need to think about what happens now. And we need to think quickly. This road is hardly the busiest ever, but someone’ll be along sooner or later.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Robert said.

“What happens now?” Pru said, breaking away from Rachel. “What happens now? Edmund just ran someone over. He’s like three times over the limit, and we let him drive. We’re all culpable. What happens now is we all go to prison for a very long time.”

“What?” Robert said. “It was Edmund driving, not us.”