Iremember that I was screaming even before I brought the car to a halt.  I recall the impact, of course—the slight shudder of the wheel and the nauseating thud. But what I remember most are my own screams from inside the car. They were ear-shattering, echoing off the closed windows, and they went on until I turned the ignition off and was finally able to push open the door. My screams then turned into panicked prayer. “No, no, no . . .” is all I remember saying.

Barely able to breathe, I ran to the front of the car. I didn’t see any damage:

The car was, as I said, an older model, one structured to withstand more impact than the cars of today. But I didn’t see the body. I had a sudden premonition that I’d run over her, that I’d find her body wedged beneath the car, and as the horrible vision passed in front of my eyes, I felt my stomach muscles constrict.  Now, I’ll tell you that I’m not the kind of person who is easily rattled—people often comment on my self-control—but I confess that at that moment I put my hands on my knees and nearly vomited. As the feeling finally subsided, I forced myself to look beneath the car. I didn’t see anything.

I ran from side to side, looking for her. I didn’t see her, not right away, and I had a strange sense that maybe I’d been mistaken, that it must have been my imagination.

I started to jog then, checking one side of the road and then the other, hoping against hope that somehow I’d simply grazed her, that maybe she’d merely been knocked unconscious. I looked behind the car and still didn’t find her, and I knew then where she had to be.

As my stomach started doing flip-flops again, my eyes scanned the area in front of the car. My headlights were still on. I took a few hesitant steps forward, and it was then that I spotted her in the ditch, about twenty yards away.  I debated whether I should run to the nearest house and call an ambulance or whether I should go to her. At the time, the latter seemed like the right thing to do, and as I approached, I found myself moving more and more slowly, as if slowing down would make the outcome less certain.

Her body, I noticed right off, was lying at an unnatural angle. One leg looked bent somehow, sort of crossed over the other at the thigh, the knee twisted at an impossible angle and the foot facing the wrong way. One arm was sandwiched beneath her torso, the other above her head. She was on her back.  Her eyes were open.

I remember that it didn’t strike me that she was dead, at least in that first instant. But it didn’t take more than a couple of seconds to realize that there was something about the glaze in her eyes that wasn’t right. They didn’t seem real—they were almost a caricature of the way eyes look, like the eyes of a mannequin in a department store window. But as I stared, I think it was their utter stillness that really drove the point home. In all the time I stood above her, she didn’t blink at all.

It was then that I noticed the blood pooling beneath her head, and everything sort of hit at once—her eyes, the position of her body, the blood . . .  And for the first time, I knew with certainty that she was dead.  I think I collapsed then. I can’t remember making the conscious decision to get close to her, but that’s exactly where I found myself a moment later. I put my ear to her chest, I put my ear to her mouth, I checked for a pulse. I checked for any movement at all, any flicker of life, anything to prod me to further action.

There was nothing.

Later, the autopsy would show—and the newspapers would report—that she died instantly. I say this so that you’ll know I’m telling the truth. Missy Ryan had no chance at all, no matter what I might have done later.  I don’t know how long I stayed beside her, but it couldn’t have been long. I do remember staggering back to my car and opening my trunk; I do remember finding the blanket and covering her body. At the time, it seemed like the right thing to do. Charlie suspected that I’d been trying to say that I was sorry, and looking back, I think that was part of it. But the other part was that I simply didn’t want anyone to see her the way that I had. So I covered her up, as if covering my own sin.

My memories after that are hazy. The next thing I remember was that I was in my car, heading for home. I really can’t explain it, other than that I wasn’t thinking clearly. Had the same thing happened now, had I known the things I do now, I wouldn’t have done that. I would have run to the nearest house and called the police. For some reason, that night, I didn’t.

I don’t think, however, that I was trying to hide what I had done. Not then, anyway. In looking back and trying to understand it now, I think I started driving home because that was where I needed to be. Like a moth drawn to a porch light, I didn’t seem to have a choice. I simply reacted to a situation.  Nor did I do the right thing when I got home. All I can remember about that is that I’d never felt more exhausted in my life, and instead of making the call, I simply crawled into bed and went to sleep.

The next thing I knew, it was morning.

There is something terrible in the moments after waking up, when the subconscious knows that something terrible has happened but before all the memories flash back in their entirety. That’s what I experienced as soon as my eyes fluttered open. It was as if I couldn’t breathe, as if all the air had been forced out of me somehow, but as soon as I inhaled, it all came surging back.  The drive.

The impact.

The way Missy had looked when I found her.

I brought my hands to my face, not wanting to believe it. I remember that my heart started beating hard in my chest, and I prayed fervently that it had simply been a dream. I’d had dreams like that before, ones that seemed so real that it took a few moments of serious reflection before I realized my error.  This time, the reality never went away. Instead, it grew steadily worse, and I felt myself sink inward, as if drowning in my own private ocean.  A few minutes later, I was reading the article in the newspaper.

And this was when my real crime occurred.

I saw the photos, I read what had happened. I saw the quotes from the police, vowing to find whoever had done this, no matter how long it took. And with that came the horrible realization that what had happened—this terrible, terrible accident—wasn’t regarded as an accident. Somehow, it was regarded as a crime.  Hit-and-run, the article said. A felony.

I saw the phone sitting on the counter, as if beckoning to me.

I had run.

In their minds, I was guilty, no matter what the circumstances were.  I’ll say again that despite what I had done the night before, what happened then wasn’t a crime, no matter what the article said. I wasn’t making a conscious decision to flee that night. I wasn’t thinking clearly enough for that.  No, my crime hadn’t occurred the night before.

My crime occurred in the kitchen, when I looked at the phone and didn’t make the call.

Though the article had rattled me, I was thinking clearly then. I’m not making excuses for that, since there are none. I weighed my fears against what I knew was right, and my fears won out in the end.

I was terrified of going to jail for what I knew in my heart was an accident, and I began to make excuses. I think I told myself that I would call later; I didn’t. I told myself that I would wait a couple of days until things settled down, then call; I didn’t. Then I decided to wait until after the funeral.  And by then, I knew it was too late.