If He Had Been with Me

n August 8th, Phineas Smith died, and I can imagine every detail of that night. I can see his face and the curl of his fingers around the steering wheel. I can hear his breathing and I feel the race of his pulse.

I know what he was thinking about as he took that turn too fast.

I know what they had been arguing about before the little red car spun out.

I know that Sylvie’s face was already streaked with tears when she crashed through the windshield.

It’d be wrong to say Sylvie killed Phineas. She was the instrument of his death, but not the cause. If he had been with me, Finny would still be alive. If he had been with me, everything would have been different. But whose fault is it that he wasn’t?

I see Finny sitting in the red car, perfect and untouched. Rain falls through the hole in the windshield but he does not feel it. He feels nothing. He thinks nothing. He is alive.

Stay. I whisper to him. Stay in the car. Stay in this moment. Stay with me.

But of course he never does.

Suddenly, as if he has been punched, his senses come back to him. He feels the warm leather seat beneath his jeans, and the steering wheel clutched in his fingers so tight that his knuckles are white. He sees the glass glittering around him and the gaping hole in front of him. And through that hole where the windshield once was, he sees her. Through the blackness and the rain he sees Sylvie lying in the road, still and quiet.

Stay, I whisper.

Just as suddenly, his hands unclench from the wheel and he is taking off the seat belt that spared his life, opening the door and running down the road toward her.

I see the puddle of water by her head even though he does not. I see the black glistening power line that the storm has torn down draped through the water. Finny does not; he only sees her, what he thinks is his destination.

Sylvie lies on the other side of the puddle, safe and unmoving, only serving her purpose.

He kneels before her. He says her name. She does not move. He is filled with a fear and panic that matches my own in watching this moment. To steady himself, he lays his left hand down by her head.

Death happens to him more suddenly than I can describe to you or even care to imagine.