"Six vehicles went past her during those forty-three minutes," Claire said. "You were the seventh to reach that stretch afterward."
Evan studied the photographs without touching them. "Those drivers may not have known what they saw."
"I know." Claire turned the final page. "I haven't even decided what I think about them yet."
She looked toward Mia, who was showing Wells the yellow garage she had drawn. Then she looked back at the folder.
"But when I was lying on that floor, I kept thinking someone might have found her and kept driving. And now I know exactly how many chances there were."
Evan put his hands in his jacket pockets. He wanted to say the other drivers had been frightened, busy, unable to stop, or simply unlucky. He could not know any of those things from the pictures. He knew only what he had chosen when the pale shape moved beside the road.
"I'm glad I stopped," he said.
Claire closed the folder gently. "So am I."
She did not ask him to pose for a photograph. He did not ask her name a second time, even after a trooper quietly explained that Claire was a senior executive at a major automotive technology company. They were both thinking about children who had spent too many hours afraid. Those other details could wait until morning had become something ordinary again.
Evan drove home that morning with the milk still on the passenger floor, now warm enough that he wasn't sure he should keep it. His hands felt thick and clumsy on the steering wheel. The road looked different in daylight, stripped of the rain and darkness that had hidden its ditches and distances. He passed the junction where he had first seen Mia and slowed almost involuntarily.
From the seat of the tow truck, the ditch appeared shallow and harmless. From a regular car, he suspected, the tall weeds would hide most of the slope. Beyond the access road stood a faded county sign with two of its reflective panels missing. He made a mental note to tell Wells, then remembered he no longer needed to keep every fact in his head. He pulled into a safe turnout and wrote the location on his service clipboard.
At home, Sophie was waiting at the kitchen table in the same pajamas she had worn the night before. Mrs. Alvarez had made toast and eggs, but Sophie was eating dry cereal from a chipped blue bowl. She stood when Evan entered, looked him over carefully, and then wrapped her arms around his greasy jacket.
"You smell like the engine room of a ferry," she said.
"That's good. I was worried I'd started smelling like a person with his life together."
She pulled back to inspect his face. "You look tired."
"I am."
"You can say that instead of pretending."