And what, Colin wondered, will my family be like? Will my baby grow up to be like me, like Meg? Neither? And after seven or eight decades of my own life, will I become like my mother, gentle during the daylight, confused and vitriolic after sunset?

The more time Colin spent ruminating about the past and fearing the future, the more he realized there wasn’t a damn thing tos be done about either of them. Why, then, waste so much energy dwelling on both?

Perhaps that was the real puzzle to solve. How to be in the now. The here. Maybe owning the present was really the key to happiness.

Later, months later, years later, Colin would remember this thought. He’d remember back to this specific moment, driving the streets of Whitefish Bay, two minutes from home, three minutes from his beer and couch. This thought about the dwelling on the past and the future he’d remember with equal doses of irony and pain. And then, when he was much, much older, with a sad and crushing acceptance. Only with this acceptance would he ever finally own the present.

His cell phone buzzed. The display on the dashboard showed Meg’s face, a picture he’d taken two years earlier on their trip to Bermuda. Meg had been standing in their hotel room, getting ready for dinner, putting her earrings in when Colin told her for the millionth time he loved her. When she’d turned and smiled, he’d taken her picture, capturing a look on her face that he wanted to always remember. The way she looked at him with such a subtle understanding that only he could see it.

He pressed the Answer button on the screen.

“Hi, baby. Almost home.”

The voice that came back wasn’t Meg’s. It was female, older, and carved with confusion.

“There’s been an…oh, just something horrible. An accident,” his mother said.

“Wait, what…Mom? What accident? Where’s Meg?”

His mother didn’t reply.

“Put her on the phone,” Colin said.

“Oh, dear. It’s just terrible. She can’t talk.”

Every nerve ending in Colin’s body burned. He’d had plenty of moments of pure adrenaline as a cop, but he never knew what it felt like when it was simultaneously steeped in dread. Now he did.

“Mom, where are you?”

“At the house. Oh, it’s so terrible. She was just helping me clean up.”

Colin hit the gas. “Listen to me. Don’t move. I’ll be right there. Tell her I’m coming. Just tell her I’ll be there in a minute. Less.” He didn’t wait for a reply. Colin disconnected and called into dispatch, requesting emergency medical services at his mother’s address. He didn’t even know what had happened, but all his mind could picture was Meg having gone into labor early. Maybe she tried to lift something too heavy. Damn it, he told her she shouldn’t be moving things around at his mother’s house. But Meg had insisted, saying she wouldn’t carry any big boxes. Saying she just wanted Jackie’s home a little more in order by the time the baby came, and she knew Jackie wasn’t going to clean anything herself.