No Exit by Taylor Adams 2

The cameras, too. The fuzzy microphones. The
investigators, clutching their notepads and tablets, trading
gentle questions and sideways glances. The phone interviews
with journalists whose accents she could barely understand.
The news truck parked outside with an antenna that looked
like a ship’s mast. The reverent, almost fearful way people
hushed their voices when speaking about the dead, like poor
Edward Schaeffer. And Corporal Ron Hill, the highway
patrolman who made a tragic, split-second error that cost him
his life.
And Darby Thorne.
The one who started it all. The restless, red-eyed art
student from an obscure state college in Boulder, racing a
beater Honda Civic across the Rockies, who’d first stumbled
across a child locked in a stranger’s van and took heroic action
to save her.
And, against all odds, succeeded.
Darby came to that rest stop for a reason, Jay’s mother
had said back at Saint Joseph. Sometimes God puts people
exactly where they need to be.
Even when they don’t know it.
A gust slipped through the cemetery, breathing among the
taller gravestones, making Jay shiver, and now her mother
caught up to the group, flipping up her sunglasses to read the
letter as they coalesced on paper, clearer with every stroke of
black crayon. “She … she had a pretty name.”
“Yeah. She did.”
Sunlight pierced the clouds and for a few seconds, Jay felt
warmth on her skin. A curtain of light swept over the graves,
shimmering over granite and frozen grass blades. Then it was
gone, snuffed by a biting cold, and Jay’s father slipped his
hands into his coat pockets. For a long moment the three of
them were silent, listening to the last scratchy rubs of crayon
as the headstone transferred to paper.
“Take as long as you need,” he said.