No Exit by Taylor Adams 2

EPILOGUE
February 8
Provo, Utah
Jay didn’t realize Darby’s last name was spelled with a silent
‘e’ until she saw it milled into a cement gravestone. Below it,
the date of death: December 24.
One day before Christmas.
Seven days before New Year’s.
Forty-six days ago.
She was here with her parents in Darby’s hometown, on a
cemetery hillside still scaled with thawing snow, because her
father had insisted on making the trip. Originally, he’d wanted
to fly here much earlier in January, but Jay’s adrenal condition
had flared up with two seizures that left her bedridden and
under watch. Finally, she’d been deemed healthy enough for
travel last week. All the while, her father had insisted: We have
to see Darby Thorne again. We owe her something that can’t
be written on a check.
“That’s the one?” he asked now. A few steps downhill,
catching up.
“Yeah.”
The hours and days after the incident on the Colorado
highway were a sickly blur, but little moments snagged in
Jay’s memory. The ache of the IV needle. The roar of the rotor
blades. The way the medics had circled and applauded when
they carried her onto the helipad of Saint Joseph. The strange
blur of the drugs. The way her mother and father came racing
down that corridor in dreamy slow motion, their fingers
interlocked, holding hands in a way she’d never seen them
before. Speaking in choked voices she’d never heard. The
three-way hug atop her creaking bed. The taste of salty tears.