“Jess?” Pepper asked softly. “You ready?”
“No,” I said. “But let’s do it anyway.”
The air hit my face the second I opened the door. Everything still smelled faintly like smoke if I inhaled too deep. Possibly that was phantom memory. The emergency blanket was gone, the oxygen mask gone; all I had left were the bruises on my ribs fromwhere I’d coughed too hard and the hospital paperwork folded in my pocket to prove I hadn’t dreamed it.
Except apparently I had dreamed the part where my truck existed. Because the space it had occupied was just… plain pavement. A dull gray rectangle of asphalt with a faint ugly crescent of black where the wheels had been. Someone had swept most of the debris into a neat pile near the curb—charred bits of something unidentifiable, half a melted zip tie, a strip of plastic that might’ve once been part of my menu board.
If you hadn’t been to the truck, you might have assumed it was a little construction mess. Something temporary. Nothing important.
But I knew exactly where the tires had rested, where the hitch had sat, where the side door had opened—when it cooperated. My feet took me there automatically, like they were following grooves worn into the universe.
I stopped where the back wheel would’ve been and just… stood.
The world quieted around the edges. I could see people walking in and out of Pie Hard down the street, the big cedar tree in the square dripping with handmade ornaments. Everything looked normal, festive, annoyingly cheerful.
And here, in the middle, was a blank, too-bright patch in my life like someone had cut Pour Decisions out of the picture with scissors.
Pepper came to stand on one side of me, hands stuffed in her coat pockets. Allie flanked the other, her expression carefully neutral. Meghan hung back a little, like she understood instinctively that this was a circle you couldn’t just shoulder into.
“You okay?” Pepper asked.
I let out a breath tinged with ash and sarcasm. “Define okay.”
“On a scale of one to ‘burn this town to the ground,’” Allie offered.
“Tempting,” I muttered.
A blackened smear on the asphalt marked the site, stubborn as the coffee stains on my favorite mugs. I stared at stain until my throat got tight.
“I thought it would look worse,” I said eventually.
Meghan shifted beside Pepper. “Worse how?”
I shrugged, the movement jerky. “More… devastation. Rubble. Twisted metal. Dramatic caution tape flapping in the breeze. Instead, it’s like I parked somewhere else and forgot. Like the last six years of my life didn’t happen.”
Nobody told me I was being dramatic. Because they were good friends.
A car drove past slowly, the driver peering out the window with the kind of nosy curiosity small towns practically bred in people. I turned my back, suddenly very aware that I’d been the centerpiece of Main Street’s disaster theater two nights ago.
The girls closed ranks without my having to ask, forming a little human shield between me and the street.
“You don’t have to stay and stare at it,” Allie said quietly. “We can go. There’s no rule that says you have to… pay your respects to a parking space.”
“It’s not a parking space. It was my everything.” The words came out flatter than I had intended. Too honest. Too naked.
Meghan slid an arm around my waist, squeezing once. “It still is. It just isn’t here right now.”
I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “Where did it get taken?”
Pepper shook her head. “Rhett said they moved the next morning, but he got pulled to a cal before he heard where.”
“Probably wherever they drag stuff for investigation and insurance,” Allie said. “Wreck lot or some such.”
Investigation. Insurance. Words that made my brain want to curl into a ball.
Great. Couldn’t wait.
“Hey,” a voice called from down the sidewalk. “Y’all okay?”
