Page 48 of Chasing the Other Woman

You blame me.

The words are the most hateful ear worm I've ever dealt with.

For two years, I have carried that night like a piece of metal lodged too deep to remove. I remember the call I made. The road I chose. Sam's voice telling me to go east. My own certainty that I had it handled.

Then the slide.

The impact.

Sam's hand on her belly.

The sound she made.

I remember holding her in the back seat while Hershel drove too fast through rain, one hand pressed to the side of her face because I needed her eyes open. I remember begging her to stay with me. I remember thinking if I lost her too, there would be nothing left of me worth hauling out of that truck.

I never blamed Sam.

Not once.

And somehow I spent two years making her believe I did.

The jukebox clicks on.

The first notes of "Diggin' Up Bones" roll through the bar.

Of all the damned songs. I look up, seeing Petra walking away from the machine.

"Petra," I say, as if I've got a right to say anything about her choice of song on her own jukebox.

From somewhere near the jukebox, she answers, "Yes, Brooks?"

"You trying to torture me?"

"Yes."

Well, at least she's honest.

I watch as she walks over with two glasses of water. She sets one in front of me, then slides onto the stool on the other side of the bar. There's no masking the judgment in her expression.

"You look like hell," she says.

"I have no doubt that I do."

"I could say worse."

"It would take a lot to hurt my feelings at this point, Petra."

Petra studies me for a moment. She looks more tired than I've ever seen her.

"When we were kids," she says, "Sam watched Twister so many times my mama threatened to hide the VHS."

I can imagine Sam, young and hopeful, watching that movie over and over again.

Petra props her elbows on the bar. "She thought Bill Paxton was the perfect man. Maybe not him exactly, but his character. She liked that he understood the storm. That he didn't treat it like a party trick. She said she was going to find a man like that someday. Somebody who knew the danger and the science and the chase, and who would stand beside her in the middle of it."

I look down at the glass she gave me. There is a chip along the rim.

"Maybe she would've been better off if she'd gotten Bill Paxton," Petra says.