They never arrived.

Every time I reach this point in the story, in my own mind, I have to stop and sit with the ordinariness of that morning, because that is where the real horror lives for me, not in the crash but in how normal it all was up until then.

A father dropped his daughter at daycare.

A husband blew his wife a kiss through a car window and called her teacher the way he always did.

A brother arrived on time with a folder of evidence and a fragile, stubborn hope that the person he loved would finally do the right thing.