“I was there that afternoon, Merry,” Callahan finally whispered.
I sat down on the bed because my legs no longer felt trustworthy.
For one frightened second, I thought he was about to tell me he could see.
“I was 16,” he added. “My friends and I were there to visit Mike. He lived two doors down from you.”
I knew that name at once. Mike had been our former neighbor’s son, the one with loud music and walls so thin we heard everything.
“We were careless boys doing reckless things we never truly understood,” Callahan admitted.
He told me they had been messing around near the back of the building, siphoning gas, daring each other, and showing off with the careless confidence boys that age can have. Then one mistake led to a spark, and a leak no one took seriously became something far too big to stop.
The boys ran. All of them.
I knew that name at once.
Mike’s family moved not long after. Callahan stayed and saw my name in a newspaper a day or two later.
“A girl named Merritt had survived badly scarred,” he said, repeating the words he’d read all those years ago. “That shook me.”
A few months later came the car crash. It took Callahan’s parents, his brother, and his sight. For 20 years, he carried the guilt alone.
I sat there crying without noticing when the tears had started. My wedding night had cracked wide open and become a room full of ghosts I never invited.
For 20 years, he carried the guilt alone.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I asked.
Callahan laughed once. “At first, I wasn’t sure it was you. Then you told me your name, and I got afraid.”
He confirmed what he suspected through a friend. The woman he loved was the girl from the explosion. He tried to step back. He couldn’t.
