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Prologue

Tina

The evening went great. Donald took me out to our favorite Italian restaurant. We'd had reservations for weeks. Our marriage had always been easy. We never fought. Not that we didn't disagree, but it was usually a conversation and it was over.

We'd decided long ago that life was too short to be unhappy. When we had our daughter, it was the best day of my life. She grew up to be an accomplished young woman. She still lived with us, just recently graduating with her Bachelor's degree.

We started doing date night when our daughter went to college. Once a week we went to dinner and took time for ourselves. No phones or electronics, unplugging from the World. This was always my cheat night. The older I got, the harder it was to lose those few extra pounds. So I kept to a regimented diet except on date night. That night I even splurged and had dessert.

Gorga's had the best cannoli's I'd ever tasted. I always ordered from the appetizer menu to get a smaller portion of food so I could order extra cannolis. Tonight was no different .

After eating great food, and having great conversation, we left to go home. The valet went to grab our car after Donald gave him the ticket stub. It took quite a few minutes for him to finally come back with Donald's 2024 Chevy Camaro. It was a bright cherry red and hard to miss. I teased him when he bought it, calling it his mid-life crisis.

As I started to open the door, I saw a black smudge by my handle. Taking a napkin out of my purse, I wiped it off, not thinking much about it except I was glad it wasn't a scratch.

Going down the road, the car made a weird noise. We glanced at each other uncomfortably.

“Donald?”

“My brakes,” he said, sounding worried. The car started accelerating, faster and faster.

“Donald slow down for God's sake!” I knew I said that louder than I meant to but he was scaring me.

“Tina, I'm not doing it. My brakes aren't working and the car is going faster on its own,” he said frantically.

All I could think about was my daughter. I looked over at Donald, watching him try to control this car as the power steering went out. I saw the realization dawn on his face. We were going to make an impact somewhere.

As the car swerved out of control, we went towards the guard rail, slamming into it, the car flipping over it. The glass shattering, metal crunching in on us, our bones snapping, the darkness finally overcame us and took the earth-shattering pain away.