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The wipers swatted in near hysteria at the rain distorting Luke Conway’s view.

Close to midnight, very little traffic, but it was coming down hard. Gusts sent branches and pieces of trash whipping across his path. Peering into the gloom, Luke weighed his wife’s words as she spoke to him over the phone.

“He’s sick and needs us there,” Carrie said, her voice tinged with static.

“And he helped me with the job,” Luke said.

“I know,” Carrie said. “And I want him to see Emily—”

She paused, her silence over Luke’s hands-free app underscored by the thrumming wipers. He glanced at his phone, which was illuminated with a photo of Carrie, her smile radiant as she held Emily, their one-year-old angel. He considered their situation. Soon, he’d fly back to California and they’d finalize everything on their house in LA, dispatch the movers, then fly back together to Texas for the next chapter of their lives.

Luke was eager to have Carrie and Emily with him in their new home. He’d be glad to stop living out of his suitcases, sleeping alone on a foam mattress and eating cold pizza for breakfast. But he knew this call wasn’t about him; it was about Carrie’s fear around moving back to Texas.

“It’s going to work out,” he said. “And Anna supports you. She said it wouldn’t be easy.”

“I know there are issues,” Carrie said. “I knew it when I made the decision to move back. I know Dad thinks it’s a big step and doesn’t want us to come, like he’s trying to protect me or something.”

“Right.”

“But it’s the right thing to do, for all of us. Emily will get to know her grandfather. I want that to happen. And Dad needs it.”

“That’s right.”

“So how was today?” Carrie asked.

“Good. I just went for a beer with some of the guys.”

“And you’re driving? Luke!”

“One light beer. I swear. Had a burger, too.”

“Still, you need to be careful.”

Luke winced, Carrie’s caution hanging in the air before she added, “You know what I mean.”

“They invited me. I want to fit in with the new crew.”

“What did you guys talk about?”

He nearly said cold cases and serial killers, but caught himself.

“Football.”

“Of course.” Carrie switched the subject quickly. “I was looking at the pictures you sent of the parts of Clear River I haven’t seen in a while—the town has changed so much.”

“You’d hardly recognize the place.”

“Our neighborhood looks nice.”

Luke had rented them a house in Cedar Breeze, a contemporary suburb of Clear River, a small city in East Texas situated about ninety minutes, give or take, northeast of Houston. Cedar Breeze had emerged about the time Luke and Carrie had both left Texas. Now it was a pretty community of beautiful homes along streets shaded by pine, oak and cedar trees.

“Hang on,” Luke told Carrie, slowing and signaling, then leaving US 59 for a state highway. He continued a short distance before getting onto River Road, a ribbon of blacktop that meandered through an expanse of countryside, the road dipping and rolling along a small patchwork of rural properties and forests.

The wind continued scattering broken branches and loose refuse, some of it knocking against his car. He went by Fawn Ridge, a new subdivision of cookie-cutter houses in various phases of construction. At the entrance, joggling in the wind, was one of the billboards promoting a dream community for families. No one had moved in yet. Instead of families, Fawn Ridge was occupied by lines of equipment and fortified by mounds of dark earth, pallets of lumber and sod.

The development had devoured a sizable portion of the land. The black windows of its empty houses stared out at the sprinkling of old houses and barns standing faithfully nearby, like weary soldiers surrendering to the new world.

But with tonight’s downpour, Luke saw little of it.

“Was that thunder?” Carrie said. “Maybe we should hang up?”

“I’ve got the road to myself.”

The rain was overwhelming his wipers. But as Luke came to a small valley where the road curved, he saw what no one driving nearly forty miles an hour in a storm should ever see.

Is that a person on the road, running toward me?

It happened before Luke could react. Before his brain issued the order to lift his foot from the gas to stomp the brake, before his jaw opened, before his hand spasmed on the wheel, before he could form the cognitive command to swerve, he heard and felt the heart-sickening thud.

In that one millionth of a second, in the streaming watery chaos, he thought he glimpsed something— a face of a woman, a flash of color? —streaking over his windshield.

“No!”

His stomach spasmed, his pulse hammering in time with the wipers as he stopped on the shoulder with Carrie’s voice calling from the dark.

“Luke?”

As he glanced at his mounted phone, every instinct screaming to call 911, his thoughts ran as wild as the storm.

I’ve hit a woman with my car! On River Road near Fawn Ridge! Send an ambulance!

But Luke didn’t call.

He stared at his phone, at the faces of his wife and daughter, hearing and feeling Carrie’s anguish, feeling his life ending as seconds ticked by with shards of truth piercing his thoughts.

He’d been at a bar, drinking. Driving a little too fast. And maybe he’d hit a woman.

Maybe I killed her.

He’d be charged. He’d need a lawyer. He’d lose his job.

I could go to prison. I could lose Carrie. I could lose Emily.