“Who do you think that was?” Stefan finally murmured as he warmed his hands on the dashboard vents.

“Some lunatic. Right?” I glanced at him, terrified even to blink. “Right?”

Right, but neither of us felt remotely assured, instead we were certain that a madman sat, nudged up behind a big highway sign, eyes shrunken to dark points, lying in wait for no one but us. But the blue car never reappeared. My body remained on high alert. Even the collar of my parka was damp with sweat. We came to an exit, stopped to examine the crumpled fender, drank burned coffee and ate cellophane-sealed doughnuts. Then we headed on in silence, unable by then even to bear listening to an audiobook, the stale news loop or sports talk, hypnotized by the sound of the wind and the crunch of the tires.

It was then that Stefan said, “I’m so sorry, Mom.”

“Is this about the hotel room again?” I sounded sharper than I meant to.

“No. Everything, everything.”

I glanced at him. He was crying, his fingers pressed against his eyes. “I screwed up your whole life. You probably wish I was never born.”

“Never,” I assured him.

Letter after letter from prison echoed the same strains:

Happy Birthday, Dad. I feel like an idiot even saying, hey, have a great day, because I should be there being someone you could be proud of as you turn the big four four, not somebody you have to be ashamed of...

Dear Mom, Happy Mother’s Day. Kind of ironic, right? Here I am congratulating you on something you probably wish never happened...

His words reeked of self-pity, but then again, who could blame him for feeling sorry—for us and for himself? We wrote back each time, alternately reassuring and admonishing him. When he was down on himself but could at least write to us, we could be pretty sure he was marginally okay. It was when he didn’t write that fear consumed us.

While Stefan was in prison, the time came to renew his driver’s license, which set off a firestorm of emotion for him. When Stefan first got his license, Belinda, a few months older and already in proud possession of her own license, accompanied us to his road test. She lectured him sternly: You better do this the first try, Christiansen, is all I can say. He did. And his laminated driver’s license lasted longer than the girl.

“I miss her so much already,” he said to me that fatal night at the hospital. “She’s the one who told me that I should mark the organ-donor box, just in case. Nothing would ever happen, but just in case...”