And yet, here he was. Sebastian Xavier Grant slipped on sunglasses as he walked from his parking space toward Misty River High School’s athletic fields and rows of vendors shaded by pop-up canopies.
He’d come to this particular farmers market for one reason only: to support his best friend, Ben. An eleventh-grade science teacher, Ben was responsible for staffing every volunteer position at today’s market, which was one of the high school’s most lucrative fundraisers of the year.
Sebastian had offered to volunteer wherever he was needed. Apparently, he was needed in the booster club’s spaghetti lunch line, located on the far side of the market stalls, near the base of the wooded hillside.
He checked his watch. 11:45. His shift started at twelve.
Sunshine fell over beige brick buildings that had been new back when Sebastian had gone to school there. Happy shrieks rose from the area where they’d set up inflatables, a game that involved kids wearing blown-up rings around their waists, and one of those plastic balls big enough for a person to climb inside and then roll down a lane. Today, the clean mountain air held no humidity, and only a few thin strips of cloud marked the blue of the sky. The forecast for this mid-May Saturday: seventy-eight degrees.
Sebastian strode past stalls selling beef jerky, jam, soap. Organicvegetables. Candles. Canned southern staples, like black-eyed peas. Locally crafted beer. Folk pottery. A fruit stand with peaches, plums, and blueberries.
He was just making his way out of the row when he heard a voice. A female voice.
It tripped his memory, and he came to an immediate stop. Listening hard, he weeded through the noise—conversations, the whir of a generator, laughter—until he caught a snatch of that voice again.
“Sure,” he thought he heard her say. He had to strain to make it out. “You’re welcome.”
Recognition and certainty flooded him.It was her.
He spun and scanned the people in his field of vision.
He didn’t see her.
Where was she?
Last November, not far from here, he’d swerved to avoid a car that had veered into his lane. His SUV had ended up nose-down in a roadside ditch, and the impact had knocked him out. When he’d regained consciousness, a woman had been inside his car with him. The voice he’d just overheard belonged to her.
His mind tugged him back in time to the morning of the crash.
“Sir?” she’d said to him.
Sebastian heard the feminine voice as if he were at the bottom of a hole. Chuck Berry’s “Downbound Train” played on his SUV’s radio.
“Can you hear me?” she asked, sounding worried and faintly out of breath. “Are you all right?”
Her voice was smooth and sweet like honey. He didn’t want the woman with the voice like honey to be worried. Also, he didn’t want to wake up because his head ached with dull, fierce pain.
“Sir,” she said. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” he said hoarsely.
“He fell on his knees,” Chuck Berry sang, “on the bar room floor and prayed a prayer like never before.”
Sebastian slit his eyes open. Pinpricks punctured his vision. Hewas inside his car, his seat belt cutting against his chest diagonally. What had happened?
Wincing, he lifted his chin. Cracks scarred his windshield. Beyond the hood, he could see nothing but dirt and torn grass. A pair of sapling trees wedged against his driver’s side door.
He’d been in a car crash.
How long ago? Why?
He didn’t know. He’d flown to the airstrip. He ... He remembered getting into his car and pulling out onto the road in the fog. That’s all.
He’d lost time.
Experimentally, he moved his fingers and toes. Everything was working fine except for the splitting pain in his head.
The one with the beautiful voice clicked off the radio. “Downbound Train” disappeared, leaving only a faint ringing in his ears.
