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“Such horrible weather conditions can’t be good for airplanes, can they?” Mom asked in the passenger seat, seeking an answer from Sly by looking over at him.
“It depends on the altitude, Mom. I’m sure Wavel’s fine. Planes can endure a lot.”
Their conversation died down, and the radio was the only noise in our ears other than the rain slamming onto the car. Rainstorms were so calming. They helped with the storms raging inside of my head.
“What the hell is that?” Sly muttered, slowing down the truck before stopping on the road.
I moved to the middle of the back bench to look ahead, and every time the windshield wipers moved over the glass, I caught a glimpse of something big lying in the middle of the road.
“Looks like a deer,” Mom said, leaning forward to try and get a closer look. “Someone must’ve hit it while it crossed the road. Shame they just left it lying there.”
Sly sighed and unbuckled his seatbelt. “I need to move it. I almost didn’t see it, and I don’t want the next car to hit it.”
Sly was compassionate and helpful when he wanted to be. That was mostly the case with strangers though, and rarely with his family.
“I’ll need help. It’s huge, and it’ll probably be heavy,” he said, hinting for us to get out of the car with him. We weren’t wearing raincoats or boots, but we were on a quest to get that animal off the road, so we didn’t care about getting wet.
I was drenched the second I stepped out of the car. Sly had left the headlights on, and as we moved closer to the animal, we studied it, unsure how to handle it.
“Grab its back legs, I’ll pull from the front,” he told us.
Mom and I walked around the animal, and as she leaned down to grab one of its legs, I noticed its eye twitching.
“Wait,” I said, holding out my hand to stop her. “I think it’s still alive.”
“It’s dead, Caia. Come on, help us,” Sly said, reaching down to grab the deer’s front legs.
“Shit!” He stumbled backwards as the deer jumped up.
Mom and I jumped, startled by its sudden movement, and we watched the deer skip across the road and down the steep slope leading into a ditch.
I was fascinated by how majestic that animal was, and I followed it, stopping right at the edge. I looked down, hoping to get one more glimpse at the deer, but what I saw instead made my heart stop.
I froze, unable to move. I didn’t blink, no matter how hard the raindrops hit my sensitive eyelashes.
Sly called out to me, but I didn’t take my eyes off the horrifying scene down in the ditch. Nothing around me sounded the same anymore. It was as if I was drowning myself, and the water filled my ears, making every sound surrounding me muffled.
They came to stand beside me, and the agonizing scream Mom let out shook me to my core when she saw what I was seeing. It was loud again. The rain was hitting my face in a punishing way, and Mom wouldn’t stop screaming.
She just wouldn’t stop.
Until there was nothing.
Silence.
Darkness.
A void.
Chapter 36
CAIA
Wavel never made it to Vancouver.
She didn’t make it to the airport either.
In fact, she didn’t even make it two miles away from our house. It turned out the taxi she was in came off the road after hitting that deer. It didn’t hit it hard enough to kill it, but the deer kept lying there. Almost as if it knew we were going to town that night, and it wanted us to know about the accident.
