October rain in Connecticut doesn’t simply fall from the sky. It attacks. It presses down, cold and relentless, soaking through bones before it even reaches the ground. That Tuesday evening felt especially heavy, the kind of day that makes an older woman’s joints ache long before the storm begins. The sky was dark and bruised, thick with tension, as if it was holding back something violent.
I was driving my silver sedan along I-95, the windshield wipers moving wildly against sheets of rain. I had just finished a long volunteer shift at the small clinic in Ridgefield. My hands—rough and steady after forty years of nursing—rested firmly on the steering wheel. Those hands had closed the eyes of the dying and held the tiny fingers of newborns. I was sixty-five years old, and for the first time, I truly believed I had earned peace.
My house waited for me at the end of that road. A Craftsman-style home on a quiet stretch of land. It wasn’t just a building. It was my life in physical form. Every double shift, every missed holiday, every sacrifice I made while raising Julian alone was built into those walls. The smell of old books and lavender filled the rooms. It was my safe place. My refuge.
Then came the lights.
Blinding white lights exploded through the rain, erasing everything. A semi-truck lost control, sliding across the highway like a wounded animal. Steel screamed against steel. There was no time to react. No time to pray. Just the violent impact, the explosion of the airbag, and then silence.
