behind the huge desk, she shivered even though the house’s
heat was pumping. The tank and shorts she had on, a matching
set to what she’d given Coralyn to wear to bed, felt like a poor
shield against what she was about to do.
She didn’t know much. Didn’t have much. Just a foggy
picture and a piercing pain that told her not to pursue it, but
she had to know. She opened her laptop and waited for it to
power on. She sat and debated with herself before finally
hitting the browser icon.
She tapped on the keys lightly with
her index finger, warning herself, trying to talk herself out of
it, and then she typed in her own name and hit enter.
Most of the hits were new. Business related. Magazine
articles. Lots of articles about the things she’d collected.
Paintings. That crazy tusk. A necklace. Lists of top thirty
under thirty from a few years ago. Entrepreneurial and
building and business articles. It wasn’t what she wanted. She
tried again, scrolling to the top and added the words car
accident behind her name.
There it was. The wreckage. Her mind screamed at her, her
brain and her heart aching together in protest, but she clicked
on the first article. There were photos. Not a car, but an SUV.
Twenty years ago. She was fourteen. She read, scrolling down
past the gruesome image of the crumpled SUV.
How it had left the road. A social function. Her dad,
suspected of being inebriated, but nothing was ever proven.
There, near the bottom of the article, an update. Morgan
Thompson taken to hospital with life threatening injuries. Two
daughters involved in the accident. Critical condition. Names
not being released to protect minors involved.