Prologue

“She was still so young,” my wife said when I told her. She was as stunned as I was.

I nodded.

“How’d it happen?” she asked.

“Car accident. Just some random thing.”

She rushed into my arms, eyes misting over, and hugged me tight as I held her.

“I’m so sorry, Paul,” she whispered, her voice thick with emotion. “I know how much she meant to you.”

I nodded; my eyes stung, and I blinked back tears of my own. I shook my head, as if doing so could ward off the tears that were welling up. I was a grown man, I hadn’t cried in years. Many years.

“When’s the funeral?” she asked.

I swallowed hard. “The day after tomorrow.”

“Do you want the girls to go?”

I nodded. “I think so. I think it’s ... important.”

She nodded and laid her head against my chest again, seeking comfort in the certainty of my body. “I’ll miss her.”

“Me too,” I said, my voice raspy with pent-up emotion.

My chest was tight and I felt a growing knot in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t want to believe it. A car accident. Just some random thing.

Random hurts.

Some time later, I don’t know how long, the phone rang. My wife stepped back and wiped her eyes, smiling bleakly at me.

I cleared my throat and then picked up the receiver.

“Hello.”

“May I please speak to Paul Hughes?”

“This is he.”

“Mr. Hughes, my name is Nathan Wei. I’m an attorney, and the executor for the estate...”

I listened to him with only half my attention. He offered me his deepest condolences on my, our, loss. It sounded strictly pro forma, but I appreciated it nonetheless. I smiled at my wife and sat down heavily in my office chair. I picked up my pen, flipped the page on the notepad, and began writing as he talked.

It was going to be a long couple of days, and I couldn’t imagine how we were going to tell the girls. With an inaudible sigh, I concentrated on the lawyer and blew a kiss to my wife. She smiled sadly and closed the door to my office. A short time later, after I’d hung up the phone, I leaned back in my chair and stared at the ceiling, lost in thought.

When I was in high school, and then college, so much of my life consisted of routine. I suppose it’s the same for everyone. Even today, much of my life is routine. Pedestrian. Mundane. But there are times when the routine is broken, and these are the times by which we measure our lives: a kiss, a love, a graduation, the birth of a child, the death of a lover.

Once again, sitting at my desk in the quiet afternoon hours, I thought back to my past, to one of those times when the routine of my life was broken, and the world seemed to change, all at once. As you might have guessed, it was the summer of 1979. But there’s so much to explain before I get there. In many ways, my life changed more during my sophomore year in high school, but the changes were all gradual. They’re obvious to me now, but at the time, I hardly noticed them.