Part One

The car had been hovering close to empty for the last 30 miles or so. I don't know why I didn't fill it up at the last station, or the one we'd stopped at just half an hour before it. The only reason we'd made those stops was to get food. In a trip that should have taken only about two and a half hours, we'd stopped for food four times already, lengthening the drive to three hours with 50 miles yet to go. It didn't really matter that we'd eaten right before leaving, either. Eat lunch, eat dessert. Stop at gas station for a snack, stop again half an hour later. This was not hunger. This was the fact that none of us was in any kind of hurry to get there. That, and grief makes you want to eat. And eat and eat. Considering I couldn't have told you what I'd eaten for any meal the previous week, or whether or not I'd eaten at all or what I'd done on any given day other than stumble out of bed at some point and open a bottle of wine maybe this was a good thing. The pump had already clicked off one, maybe ten minutes before. I felt a gentle tap on the shoulder. "I think we're set to go". I blinked. It took a minute before that sunk in. "Sure. Yeah." It was getting dark and we still had to check into the hotel. "I think we should probably try and drive all the way through at this point." I said, getting into the car. A few somber nods showed that we were all in agreement.

A little less than an hour later and I was driving through the twisted highway entrance to Duluth. To the right was Lake Superior, shining in the dark with the reflection of the lights from the harbor and the city bluffs ahead. Our ears popped as I drove through a higher altitude into the city. I looked in the rearview mirror and watched my friend wiping tears away as she stared out the window. I wasn't ready to face this. You would think that having the support of three other people who had just suffered the same loss as you would be strengthening. But it wasn't. It was very, very lonely.

We planned on staying a couple of days. All of us grew up here and it was likely that other friends we hadn't seen in a very long time would be here. A strange reunion it was. Most of us had known each other since grade school, but many had taken their graduation freedom and scattered as quickly as possible. Some had moved to the cities. I know at least one couple who had gotten married right after high school split and moved to England as soon as they could get their papers together. Some had stayed to start families or continue working for their family businesses. It was strange to think that many of the people I'd known almost my entire life until that point had just….disappeared. People can just do that, you know. Disappear on you. You can be talking to them on the phone one day and the next….gone. No warning.

I opened the bottle of whiskey I'd brought with me. One of the bottles I'd brought with me. For three days and two nights, we'd practically cleaned out a corner of the liquor store. We almost had to leave some of the luggage behind in the parking lot to fit it all in the trunk. I decided to at least start the night with a little civility and pulled one of the little hotel cups out of its plastic wrap. I didn't bother to measure. I wasn't feeling that civil. I dug my laptop out and opened it. There must be some kind of news by now. It had been a week already since the accident but when I checked before we left, there were still no leads on the person responsible. I'd probably typed "hit and run, pedestrian, Duluth" into the Google search bar about a million times already this week. No one saw it. No one got there until about two hours after it happened. No one knew whether or not she could have survived if help had gotten there sooner. No one knew why she didn't have her cell phone or why she'd chosen the most remote road possible or why she wanted to train for a marathon in the first place or why the car couldn't have just stopped. There were no answers to these things. There probably wouldn't be for a very long time.

We stayed up until three in the morning, talking and reminiscing. I don't remember it all, even if I didn't really feel that three quarters of that bottle either. The funeral was at nine. I wasn't ready for it. I thought about backing out. I thought about my friend. I thought about running along the beach, about daring each other to jump in the lake each spring. I thought about the hours we'd spend under blankets in the sand, talking about relationships, music, the stupid books we both liked to read. I thought about getting in trouble when we never came home on time. I thought about how we hadn't talked nearly as often as we should have in the last year or so. I slept. I woke up. She did not.