“I accept it,” I said, dropping the panic from my voice. “But I think you’ll have a harder time accepting your future.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I asked you to confess,” I said. “And you did. Live.”
A third voice cut through the call.
“Ryan Hayes, this is Detective Sergeant Miller. Your confession is being broadcast on a law enforcement channel. Pull over now.”
Ryan gasped.
But I still had no brakes.
“Miller, I can’t stop!”
“Runaway truck ramp on your left! Two hundred yards!”
I saw it.
I yanked the wheel left.
The SUV slammed into the gravel ramp. Rocks grabbed the tires. My body slammed into the seat belt. The airbags exploded.
Then everything stopped.
Rain hissed around me.
I forced the door open and stumbled out.
Down the mountain, red and blue lights filled the road. Ryan tried to turn his Jaguar around, but police cruisers blocked both ends of the pass.
I watched Detective Miller drag him from the car and cuff him against the wet hood.
The trial was a massacre.
Ryan and Brooke’s expensive lawyers could not fight a recorded confession, Sophie’s testimony, and my forensic evidence. When Travis flipped to avoid the harshest sentence, the case was over.
Ryan and Brooke were convicted of murder, conspiracy, and attempted murder.
Both received consecutive life sentences without parole.
One year later, I stood beside the lake where Ava and Jack used to feed ducks.
I no longer wore black. I wore a beige trench coat in the spring wind. Beside me stood Grace, my attorney, and Sophie, now walking with a cane and studying law through a foundation I created from Ryan and Brooke’s seized assets.
Grace handed me a sealed envelope from prison.
Ryan’s handwriting was shaky.
“It’s his fifth letter this month,” she said. “Do you want to read it?”
I looked at the envelope.
I thought about the laugh at the funeral.
I thought about the man who believed he could bury me in grief.
I struck a match and burned the letter until the ash floated over the water.
“No,” I said. “I have nothing left to say to a ghost.”
For the first time since the crash, the silence around me did not feel empty.
It felt safe.
