Coming Back

 

Coming Back

She woke up when her car hit the tree.

The world was a blur, viewed from somewhere far behind her eyes. Beyond the windscreen, a single beam reached out into darkness.


Reaching for the handbrake, she used it to drag herself upright, wincing as she straightened.

She shouldn’t have left Alec’s so late – shouldn’t even have gone in when she dropped him home. It wasn’t as if she liked him… much. She’d fancied him rotten back then, but she never could trust him. Not like her Matt.

She reached to turn off the ignition and gasped as agony speared her shoulder. Pain gripped the ankle that had moved to the accelerator. She must call 999. Thank heavens she’d stuck to fruit juice at the reunion.

Not that sobriety had held her back.

Her phone was in her bag in the passenger footwell. She reached…

She’d try again when her head stopped pounding. Her hand went to her forehead and met sticky dampness.

The lights of a car passed the T-junction ahead. Its driver had no reason to glance down this back road and notice a one-eyed motor embracing the signpost. Her eyelids blinked and remained closed, as they had earlier on the motorway.

That time, she’d jerked awake and pulled the steering wheel back in line. Shaken, she’d opened the window and sung loudly until she reached her exit. Turning into this back road, she’d told herself she was almost home.


She remembered thinking the same thing that other time she’d fallen asleep on a deserted road. That time she’d woken when the car hit the opposite kerb. She’d been able to drive it home, although the wheels had later needed realigning. When she told Matt, he’d shaken his shaggy blond head before hugging her and saying he’d do the night driving when they were married.

Tears overflowed her closed eyelids. Barely a year after his death, here she was again –

by Cathy Cade

www.cathy-cade.com

 

www.facebook.com/cathycade.wordsmith

https://www.amazon.co.uk/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B07KPJGBLJ

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/cathincade

https://www.goodreads.com/cathycade

 


 

 

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