Chapter One: The Storm

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Rain swept across Holman Highway in a wave of heavy sheets, washing the road in a blur of gray. The taillights ahead smudged into red smears, barely visible through the steady flick of Jake Keillor’s wipers. He eased off the gas, and leaned forward, squinting to find the road through the blinding rain.

   The Grateful Dead played through the truck’s speakers, low and familiar. Terri always sang along without hesitation, slightly off-key but joyful, one hand on the dashboard like she was feeling the rhythm with her bones. Their soundtrack had always been a strange mix—Jerry Garcia, (a musical taste inherited from his father),  and Terri's worship songs patched together like everything else in their life.

    Jake had kept the music playing after she was gone. The lyrics, though—especially the ones about Jesus—he’d stopped hearing them a long time ago.

    He tapped the brakes as he passed a sign for the Skyler Forest Drive. Just down the road, nestled behind a row of eucalyptus trees, was the little church Terri used to belong to. The one he visited only twice.

    But there were more pressing things tonight. Martha Chen’s roof, for one.

    The rain was already coming down hard when he’d started the job earlier. He could’ve pushed it to tomorrow, made excuses—but she’d looked at him with those worried eyes, told him she was afraid of water pooling above her daughter’s bedroom. So he’d stayed. Took his time with the flashing. Measured twice, cut once. Overlapped each shingle like he was tucking in a child for the night.

    "God sent you today," Martha had said, pressing a Tupperware of dumplings into his hands before he left. Her voice was soft but certain like she was handing him more than just food. Like she meant it.

   Jake nodded and thanked her. But as he climbed into the cab and set the dumplings on the seat beside him, her words echoed in a place he didn’t like to visit.

    In his world, a roof held because it was done right. Because you took your time, didn’t rush, and didn’t cut corners. It held because you showed up. Not because heaven sent you.

    He turned the wipers up another notch and kept driving, the storm pressing in on all sides, the scent of warm dumplings mixing with rain, and the faint, lingering perfume of Terri’s voice in his memory.

   His phone buzzed on the passenger seat. Could be a potential customer, Jake thought. Outside, the wipers dragged across the windshield, struggling to keep up with the downpour. He reached for the phone, and for just a moment, something in him stirred. A thought passed through—quiet, unbidden. Maybe it was Terri, calling to ask when he’d be home for dinner. Her voice, warm and familiar, flickered in his mind like a memory too close to touch.

But the ringing stopped, the screen went dark. The moment slipped away, and in its place came a hollow ache he couldn’t shake.

    The curve showed up sooner than he expected. He hit the brakes, too hard. One look at the speedometer told him what he already felt in his gut: he was going too fast. Way too fast. The tires broke loose, and just like that, the road was gone, washed out in rain, turned into something wild and unforgiving. The truck started to fishtail.

    Jake's father’s voice surfaced in his mind, steady as ever.

    Always know your exit routes, son. Always have a plan.

    But some things couldn’t be planned for. His mother’s sudden death. Terri’s cancer. The way life could rip the wheel from your hands no matter how tightly you held on.

    The tires let go completely. The truck lifted, weightless. Time stretched and bent at the edges, turning seconds into something surreal. Jake could do nothing but brace for whatever came next.

   In that instant, Jake's mind flashed back to when he was ten years old again, tucked into the backseat of his father’s Chevy, the road stretching ahead toward his grandparents’ house for Thanksgiving. Traveling down the same highway, the rain rapidly raced across the window as the sound of the tires splashed water from the roadway.

    His dad was in the middle of one of his corny jokes—the kind that made his mom laugh, that soft, effortless laugh Jake always loved. The windshield wipers kept time with the song on the radio, a steady, familiar rhythm.

    We’re almost to Grandma’s, Sweetie, his mom turned to him.

    Her seatbelt was off – she'd removed it to reach into the backseat for her sweater moments before. That single moment would haunt his father forever. 

    The semi-truck appeared suddenly through the rain, its wheels kicking up walls of water. Young Jake saw his father's hands tighten on the wheel and heard his mother's sharp gasp of breath. The Chevy's tires lost their grip, and the world began to spin. Everything moved in slow motion, like a movie played frame by frame. 

    Ron! his mother screamed, reaching back toward Jake as if she could somehow protect him from what was coming. The movement took her further from the seat, further from safety. Jake caught the glint of her wedding ring, just for a second, as she reached for him.

    Then came the sounds—the ones that would never leave him. His mother’s scream, sharp and sudden, cut off too soon. The screech of metal twisting, tearing. His father’s voice, raw and desperate -

Hold on! Oh, crap! - before the final, crushing impact sent them spinning into the center divider.

    In the terrible silence that followed, the radio continued to play. A Grateful Dead song lamenting about cold rain and snow droned on as young Jake's world shattered. 

   Dad? Jake's voice sounded strange to his ears, like someone else talking. Mom?! Dad?! 

    The rain kept falling. Somewhere in the distance, sirens wailed, growing closer. Jake sat frozen in the backseat, his breath shallow, his fingers clenched tightly against the worn fabric. The seatbelt still held him firm, as if it were the only thing keeping him tethered to the moment.

     Jake couldn’t see his mom. His dad sat still in the front seat. He wasn’t moving. Dad. Dad, are you all right? Where’s Mom? His father moaned, unable to get words out. Jake saw blood dripping down the side of his dad’s face. Jake never felt this frightened before.

     He wanted to find his mom. Where was she? Jake just sat there, dazed, his ten-year-old mind grasping at thoughts that wouldn’t come.

    Through the broken, jagged windshield, Jake watched emergency lights approach, red and blue shadows strobing through the rain. Cars had stopped on both sides of the highway now. Blurred faces hovered at the edges of his vision, their mouths moving, but no sound reached him. Someone was shouting—something about a woman, about checking the embankment.

    His father’s blood continued to drip slowly from the side of his face, each drop marking time like an unsteady metronome.

    Mom? Jake's voice cried out like a lamb, calling for its mother. But she was gone. Jake's mother had been sent through the windshield from the force of the impact. They found her body thirty feet from the wreck.

    The first responders suddenly materialized out of the rain like ghosts. A firefighter appeared at Jake's window; his yellow gear gleaming wet in the emergency lights. Hey buddy, you okay in there? Can you tell me your name? 

    Jake, he said. Where's my mom!... Where’s my mom!..

    The firefighter's face changed slightly - a tightening around the eyes that ten-year-old Jake would remember for the rest of his life. We're going to get you out, Jake. Just stay still for me, okay? 

    More voices joined the storm's chorus. Female victim, DOS, approximately thirty feet from the vehicle...

    Male driver's responsive but confused... Child conscious, no visible injuries... 

    The words drifted through the air like they weren’t meant for him, but still landed heavy in his chest.

He couldn’t move. Could barely breathe. All he could do was sit there and watch as strangers tried to put back together the man who had always seemed so unshakable.

    The rescue felt like it took forever—and somehow, no time at all.

    Through the fractured window, Jake watched them cut his father’s seatbelt and ease him onto the backboard, carefully as they moved his limbs. The paramedics worked in low voices, calm but urgent, the way people get when things are serious.

     BP’s dropping. Possible internal bleeding. We need another unit out here.

    The words drifted through the air like they weren’t meant for him, but still landed heavy in his chest.

    A new voice reached him. Calm. Low. A firefighter crouched beside the door, explaining what they were going to do. Jake nodded, but the words slipped past him like water over glass.

    The door let out a long groan as they pried it open—metal resisting metal like it didn’t want to give.

Then hands were there. Sure, practiced. They cradled the back of his neck while another firefighter found the seatbelt buckle.

    That’s it. Easy, now.

    Someone said it like you’d speak to a cornered dog. Not unkind—just careful.

    In an instant, the seatbelt snapped off and he was free.

    Officer Sanchez was the next face he saw, a blanket already in her hands. She wrapped it around his shoulders without a word, her touch gentle, steady. When she leaned close, he caught the name on her tag, the faint creases around her eyes, and something in the way she didn’t quite look at him directly.

She smelled like coffee and rain and something floral he couldn’t name. That scent would follow him for years. It would become the smell of bad news.

    Your dad’s going to be okay, she said softly, guiding him toward an ambulance. The paramedics are taking good care of him.

    But she didn’t say anything about his mother. And that’s when he knew. He didn’t need to ask. He knew.

    The firefighters kept glancing toward the embankment, toward the dark. The paramedics moved quickly, but not urgently. Their faces were too quiet. Set. The kind of look people wore when the thing they feared had already happened.

    The rain didn’t lift. The voices around him didn’t rise or fall. But the world had already changed.

    And then the memory vanished. Gone.

    Jake was face-to-face with the present moment. The truck was rocking back and forth now. The sound of hard rain and tires hissing on the soaked roadway filled Jake's head. He gripped the steering wheel hard as the tires slid across the flooded road. No spinning, no screeching—just that awful float. Like the whole truck had lost its weight.

    He wasn’t driving anymore. He was just along for the ride. The center lane disappeared. Then the slow lane. The shoulder came fast. Then the grass. The truck tipped as the wheels caught the edge of the drainage ditch, just enough to make his stomach lift. For a breathless second, everything went still.

    Then came the drop.

    Slamming hard, the truck rocked and then settled, like the end of a carnival ride. The impact knocked everything loose – Mrs. Chen's dumpling hit the floorboard, his tool belt slid forward, and papers flew through the cab like startled birds. The truck's engine sputtered and then stopped. It came to rest at an awkward angle, the driver's side lifted.

    Jake sat still, watching the rain streak sideways across the windshield. The wipers kept moving, but they weren’t doing anything. His hands were on the steering wheel, and his breath came in shallow bursts. He moved his fingers. Then his arms and legs. Still whole. Still here.

    In the rearview, red taillights glowed faintly – other drivers slowing down, maybe wondering if they should stop. Jake didn’t move. Not yet.

    Some things don’t come back. His mother's laugh – the one that always rose just a little higher at the end. Terri’s voice, off-key and fearless, belting Grateful Dead lyrics with the windows down. The quiet feeling of someone you loved was waiting at home, to welcome you, to hug you, to love you.

    Gone.       

    Jake was still here. Still breathing. Still able to fix what hadn’t shattered completely.

    The engine gave one last tired cough and went silent. Only the rain remained now, steady and sure, tapping its knuckles against the cab like it had something to say. It sounded louder with the engine dead. Almost smug. Like the storm had gotten what it wanted. Again. Just like it had twenty-five years ago. That one had taken more than metal. More than a windshield. It had taken his mom. It had crushed something inside his dad that never quite sealed up again. It left a boy pressed against a cold seatbelt, staring out at his ruined world, trying to figure out why everything suddenly hurt.

    Now here he was, grown, calloused, soaked to the bone. Sitting sideways in a truck nose-down in a ditch. He shoved against the driver’s side door. Nothing. Too much weight pressing in. Too much grief.

He turned and looked through the passenger window. His tools were out there scattered like bones across the slope. The good hammer. His father’s old level. The belt he’d worn on every job since Terri gave it to him when he went out on his own.

    A semi roared past on the highway above, tires slicing through rain, sending a curtain of water down onto the road’s edge. The sound hit deep, vibrating through his chest like a memory knocking hard.

And for just a breath, he wasn’t here. He was back in the Chevy, rain pounding on glass, metal crushing, heart racing. Fear beyond what young Jake could handle.

    But this wasn’t then. He wasn’t that boy anymore, small hands gripping the edge of a torn seat, powerless to stop what was coming. Jake was a man now. He was a builder, a problem solver, a man who tried to find a way forward, even when the road disappeared beneath him.

    The passenger door groaned but gave way when he pushed, swinging open with a gust of cold rain. He crawled across the seat, his boots crunching on broken glass from Mrs. Chen’s container. The dumplings she’d insisted he take lay scattered in the footwell. He hesitated, staring at the spilled food—another offering to chance and circumstance, like her prayers. Yet, something in him resisted dismissing those prayers this time. After all, he’d slid off the road instead of rolling. He was alive instead of...

    Maybe, for once, he wouldn’t dismiss the idea of prayers so quickly. He hadn’t rolled. He hadn’t hit anyone. He was still alive.

    Jake grabbed the doorframe and hauled himself into the rain, the cold hitting him like a slap across the face. His boots hit the wet grass and slipped out from under him, dropping him hard to one knee.

    He didn’t curse. Jake just planted his hands in the muck and leaned into it. The incline wasn’t steep, but it felt like something more than dirt and gravity pulling him down. He clawed his way up slowly—boots sliding, fingers gripping at the soggy ground—like a man trying to climb out of something heavier than mud.

    At the top, lightning cracked overhead. For an instant, the slope lit up. His tools lay strewn like a trail of breadcrumbs. His hammer. His father’s level. The old belt he'd worn on every job since he first dared call himself a contractor. He exhaled, long and slow, walking back down the slope, stopping to collect the scattered tools. One by one. Familiar weights in his hands. Solid. Real. A kind of prayer of its own.

    Behind him, another engine rumbled, low and steady. Headlights swept through the storm and fell across the F-150 like a searchlight. A truck slowed, tires crunching over gravel as it pulled onto the shoulder and idled there.

    Jake turned, rain running off the brim of his hat, off his chin. The driver’s door opened with a creak.

Out stepped a small woman in cowboy boots, raincoat flapping, unbothered by the weather. She walked like someone who knew what it was to show up in a storm.

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