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running out onto the playground with that whole terrible night flashing before my eyes again. My father and mother screaming at each other in the car. Her telling him to slow down. “Slow down, you’re drunk!” She grabbed his arm, but he pushed her away. The car swerved toward the curb.
    I called out to her, “Mommy, I’m scared!” And I started crying.
    She tried to comfort me, but my father turned around and screamed at me. “Will you shut up? I’m trying to drive!”
    And then the crash.
    I stared at my reflection in the mirror. My weird eye. The only physical reminder of that night, but what happened lingered in my mind, no matter how I tried to suppress it.
    Technically I lost my dad that day, too. He blamed me for the accident. I know he did. And I blamed myself. Why was I such a cry baby? I should have just kept quiet, and he wouldn’t have been so distracted. Even if he was drunk, it's not like he never drove drunk before that night. It was his crying son who pushed him over the edge. I took up wearing an eye patch for a while after mom died. I pretended to be a pirate because pirates were tough. That and the fact that I wouldn’t talk to anyone didn’t exactly gain me a lot of friends and girlfriends. I became comfortable being a loner. It was easier.
    I wrap some gauze around my hand and decide to go pay Nashville a visit rather than bothering my doctor this time of night. In all honesty, I wouldn’t mind finding out a little more about the baby blue-eyed nurse, and after all this time, I should be able to brave a hospital for an hour.
    I’m distracted by delicious smells coming from the kitchen, so I stop for a bite. I ate a few power bars during the climb, but that’s it, and I’m starving.
    “It’s about time you came downstairs. I was beginning to think your sniffer was broken,” Stella says and winks.
    “It smells wonderful, what is it?” I sit down at the kitchen bar.
    Before she turns around she pours me a bourbon. She starts to tell me what she’s cooking but stops when she sees my hand.
    “What have you done? ’
    “It’s just a cut. As soon as I’ve consumed massive amounts of whatever you have cooked, I’m driving myself to the hospital.”
    “It must be bad if you’re going to the hospital.” She talks as she fills my plate with eggplant parmesan.
    I dig in and ask her about her day between bites of food. Stella is from Italy. Her family came to America when she was a kid. She is funny, when she gets flustered at me she starts speaking Italian. When she first started working for me, I didn’t understand a word she was saying, so I started learning Italian on my flight to and from Seattle every week. She was shocked when I responded to her rant one day.
    She and her husband live at the back end of my property on the lakeside. He keeps the grounds for me and washes and waxes my car. They’re both in their mid-sixties and work harder than most people half their age.
    As I’m eating, she washes the dishes and stocks the refrigerator with leftovers.” Can I drive you back to your house before I leave?”
    “Don’t be silly. I have the golf cart. I’ll just finish up in here. What would you like for breakfast?”
    “I’m more than capable of making my own breakfast, Stella. Take the morning and sleep in.” I hand her my plate.
    “Thank you, Mr. Ryland, but there is too much to be done to be lazy.”
    I have tried multiple times to get her to call me August, but she refuses.” You are definitely not lazy.” I pat her arm. “Good night. Dinner was excellent as usual.”
     
    ☀
     
    Before I pull out of my drive I contemplate if I should go to the closest hospital, or go out of my way to get another look at those blue eyes. My head tells me just to go to the local hospital, but my other head tells me to go find the girl. Guess who wins out? I feel like I’m driving straight into trouble, and trouble has a name. Nashville.
    Thirty minutes later I pull into Moab