What happened on that lonely stretch of State Highway 71 divides cleanly into two parts, and the whole horror of it lives in the difference between them.

The first part was an accident.

The second part was a choice.

The investigators pieced together that somewhere on that drive, an argument broke out between the brothers, and the car left the road, crashed through a guardrail, and went down an embankment.

I will not dwell on the mechanics of the wreck; it is enough to say that it was, up to that instant, exactly the kind of terrible thing that happens on a highway, a tragedy with no villain in it.

Santiago came out of it able to move, bruised and shaken but on his feet.