"Stop being a coward," Jamie snapped, tinny and distant over the bluetooth, and Kelly nearly hung up on her right then.

"What the hell would you even know about it?"

"I know you're running away from a family reunion because someone made fun of your accent."

Kelly squinted through the car window, looking for the turn off hidden in all the darkness of the trees. "That's not...do you really think that's why I left?"

"Tell me the difference then, little sister."

Kelly couldn't help the whine that ground its way up out of her chest. "You know why."

"Apparently I don't."

It was too hard to explain. Kelly took a deep breath, fighting the urge to tell Jamie to leave it alone because...well, she had just run out on a family reunion, on people she hadn't seen in four years, not since she was fifteen, for crying out loud. And why? "People kept saying they were sorry. About Dad. I just...I couldn't."

"Oh, Kels." Jamie's voice, when she spoke, was unbearably sympathetic.

"No, listen," and it was suddenly important for Kelly to explain because Jamie couldn't possibly understand. "They wanted me to be sad about it, and–"

"Why? Aren't you?"

And there, that was the whole problem right there. "Isn't that something you should already know, Mhie? If you ever talked to me at all?"

"Don't you dare blame me for that, little sister. You've got two hands and a cell phone, you can always call me."

Kelly actually didn't have an answer for that, nothing that didn't sound childish and petulant, and she took the next turn aggressively to make up for it. "Why, would you even answer if I call?"

"I'd do my best." Jamie had this way of sounding so sincere. She was doing it now and Kelly suddenly missed her, even though she'd just stormed out of Uncle Toby's yard without saying goodbye, and suddenly her plan to drive to the closest town that boasted a motel with late-night check-in seemed petty and ridiculous.

"Shit, Jamie."

"You know I love you."

She made a face. "Yeah, you say that."

"Well, one of us has to have the guts."

Kelly opened her mouth to argue that it wasn't about guts, it was about not being needlessly sentimental, but something dark and huge flashed across the road through the beams of her headlights, and then, before she could react, something else slammed into the passenger side of her car with the force of a boulder.

The car skidded; Kelly tried desperately to get some traction, and managed not to roll the whole thing over but ended up in a ditch on the opposite shoulder, badly shaken, headlights blazing into the trees not a yard away.

"Shit." Kelly tried to uncurl her hands from the steering wheel. It took two goes, and even then her hands were shaking so badly, she had to concentrate hard just to unbuckle her seat-belt.

The bluetooth earpiece was gone, vanished somewhere into the car, but when she grabbed her phone out of the dock the call had disconnected anyway. Kelly redialed her sister, rummaging in the glovebox for her flashlight, and hoped it's still had batteries.

And then her sister picked up on the first ring. "What the hell happened?"

"I think I hit something. I mean, I did hit something. Or, it hit me." Kelly fumbled the door open and staggered out into the road, knees feel like jelly. "I think it was a deer." Because that first dark shape flashing through the high-beams had been deer-ish, she was pretty sure. She switched on the flashlight, thankful the batteries still good, and swept the light over the passenger side door. "Shit."