I screamed her name over and over, my voice raw and tearing until the sirens drowned me out.

I heard someone mention a drunk driver.

Then another voice said, “The mother was driving.”

I wanted to say they were wrong. That it wasn’t her. That it was me. But my voice wouldn’t work. My mind couldn’t hold onto the words.

Then everything went black.

When I woke, I was in a hospital bed, blinking against too-bright lights. Machines beeped. A nurse hovered. My body ached, dull and heavy, and in the blur of it all, the door creaked open.

For half a second, I thought it was Mom.

But it was Thomas. My father.

He looked older. More tired than I remembered. He sat beside me and laid a hand over mine, awkward and unfamiliar.

“Hey, kid,” he said.

And just like that, I knew