The same couple is still standing there on the bridge, holding each other close. The woman looks at me in a daze, her eyes wide and shiny. The kohl swooshes at their corners and her beehive hairstyle remind me of Amy Winehouse. Holding up his smartphone, the man keeps saying, “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it, man. You actually got her. That was unbelievable.”

“Were you only filming or did you think of calling for help?” I hiss at him.

I put the girl down. She doesn’t want to let go, and her tiny hands cling to my neck before finally slipping through my wet hair.

All of a sudden I feel very weak and lose my balance. Incapable of standing upright, I stagger out into the road. The little girl screams.

Something big and hot sweeps into view over my shoulder. I see a twisted face through glass. I see a black bonnet, glinting in the sunlight, swipe my legs from under me. And then I see my own shadow rising at breakneck speed from the asphalt to meet me, and hear a noise like eggshells breaking on the rim of a china cup.

The pain in my head is a thousand times more intense than the agonizing twinge you feel when you bite into an ice cream. Everything around me goes quiet. Then I melt. I melt into the ground. I sink down, faster and faster, as if I were plummeting into a deep black lake beneath the asphalt.

Something is gazing up at me expectantly from the lake’s murky depths. The sky is receding all the time, its arc farther and farther overhead. As I seep into the stone, I see the girl’s face up above, staring sadly at me with her oddly familiar eyes, which are the color of the sea in winter. Her oceanic eyes are now indistinguishable from the lake above me. I merge into the lake and its waters claim my body. Women and men cluster around the shores, obscuring the last patch of blue sky. I hear their thoughts inside my head.

The woman in the Mini tried to swerve out of the way.

The light of the low sun. It must have been the blinding light. She didn’t see him.

From the way he stumbled out into the road, I thought he must be drunk.

Is he alive?

I can make out the beggar in the threadbare tuxedo as he pushes the other people aside, offering me a fresh glimpse of the sky—the never-ending, beautiful sky.

I close my eyes. I’ll rest for a while and then get up again and continue on my way. I can just about make it there on time. It’ll take a while before the roll call for Fathers’ and Sons’ Day gets to Sam and me, to V for Valentiner, his mother’s surname.

Dear Dad,