The sky wasn’t blue the day that Taylor died. It was foggy, murky, like the top of the lake on mornings when a cold front had come in. He couldn’t see in the rain that fell like so many tears for him. She was waiting by the window when his wheel caught on a puddle that he had overlooked, humming a song as his Tahoe hit the bridge, leaning her face against the cold of the window as the glass in the windshield imploded, showering the delicate features of his face with a thousand crystalline thorns…The bluest of eyes washed red and closed, and the skies of so many were instantly dulled.

Gina’s vigil did not end until the next morning when the sheriff arrived and found her, asleep on the window seat with her face pressed onto the glass. He brought with him her mother-in-law, who had cupped Gina’s face in her hands and commanded her not to hold her breath.

“Taylor,” she’d said, “is gone. Walker is a train wreck, and I need you to be with me in this. You’re all I have left of my son.”

They’d walked outside, a march to the front of the battle line, to the end of the plank, to the squad car. The ground was sodden, trees and flowers dripping lifelessly. Gina saw each droplet of rain as a murderous fiend, an accomplice in the conspiracy to steal him away from her, the smoking gun that was the end of the sky child, the boy of so many secret dreams. Silently, she begged the soggy earth to allow her to sink further, slowly, to be swallowed. It was too early in the morning, too soon in her life for this…

The car slowed in front of the Hanson household, allowing the pair of women to climb out and step, in Gina’s mind, even closer to the moment when she would have to comprehend the terrible, impossible things that the khaki-clad sheriff had said to her.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Hanson, but your husband has been killed in a car accident. He won’t be coming home today.”