Seventeen-year-old Maeve survives the car crash that kills her mother, but the truth about that night haunts her. Sent to live with a father she doesn’t quite know, a stepmother who tries too hard, and a baby brother she refuses to know… Maeve must decide: will she keep running from the past or finally face the truth and find where she belongs? I don’t remember the impact. Not really.
I remember the rain. Light at first, then heavier, drumming against the windshield. I remember the sound of my mother’s laugh, my fingers tapping absently against the steering wheel as I told her about Nate, the boy who sat two seats ahead of me in chemistry.
He sounds like trouble, Maeve.
And I remember the headlights.
Too close. Too fast.
The next thing I remember is screaming for my mother.
I was outside the car. Somehow. I don’t remember getting there. My knees were soaked in mud, my hands covered in blood that wasn’t mine.
Mom was lying on the pavement, her body twisted wrong, her eyes half-open, staring at nothing.
I screamed her name until my throat burned. I tried to shake her awake, but she wouldn’t move.
Then… sirens.
Hands pulling me away. A voice saying something about a drunk driver.
Another voice saying, “The mother was driving.”
I gasped, tried to tell them that it was me… but the words wouldn’t come. The world spun, my stomach twisted, and then…
Blackness.
