I hung up before she could hear the catch in my voice, before the fake lilt faltered and she heard the darkness underneath. It didn’t dawn on me to cancel the dinner plans we’d made only the day before. We were going to discuss my meeting with the lawyer over wine and some takeout. A light, airy plan that we’d thought would include a bit of reminiscing—some jokes about the good and the bad. Some healthy sorrow for the loss of the woman who at times had made our lives hell but was our mother still. But that was before the final parting gift of Avril Island.

I took a deep breath to settle my nerves and turned the key in the ignition. Slowly I pulled out of my parking spot. The world was fractured and unsafe all of a sudden, and my every move had to be in accordance.

I drove only a block before the urge forced me to pull over. Taking the deed from the manila envelope, I tore it into many pieces, then hopped out of my car and scattered it into a trash bin at the end of somebody’s driveway. A garbage truck would be by soon, and my last tie to Avril Island, and all the horrible things that had happened there, would be swallowed up by pounds of other people’s trash and driven far away from me. The thought was the only thing that allowed me to put the car in drive and carry on.

Once I was on the highway, moving with the flow of traffic, my grip on the steering wheel began to loosen. I had a two-hour drive and one hour at home to figure out a plan before I’d see June. What would I tell her the appointment had been about? Could I lie right to her face? Could I tell her the truth?

A flock of birds, black ones—I think they were crows, so then it would have been a murder of crows; very fitting—rose up from a farmer’s field to the left of me, offering a quick distraction from my heavy thoughts. They looked like ink blotches on the gray sky, only their wing tips standing out with any definition. They soared upward, weightless, and swirled like a circus of acrobats, grabbing my attention, pulling it away from the road.

It would have been fine if it weren’t for the white van, which changed lanes too quickly—impatient with the slow driver in front of him and unaware that I was bird watching.

I looked away from those fluid black spots too late. There was a wall of white, my foot on the brake, metal eating metal, glass smashing. The air bag inflated like an angry balloon, punching me in the chest and snatching my breath away.