“No,” is what came out of my mouth, although how I managed to say anything at all, I had no idea, because my mouth had gone completely dry.
“Mr. Mays?” he said, sounding surprised.
I blinked. “Yes?” My pulse was hammering in my throat, blood rushing in my ears. Maybe it wasn’t?—
“Mr. Seth Mays?” the deputy asked again.
“Yes,” I repeated, something catching in my throat. Clearly something was wrong—and this didn’t feel like a precursor to me being arrested, and Elliot was missing…
“Mr. Mays, do you know who was driving your vehicle today?”
I felt the tears threatening, my throat closing off.
“Y-yes,” I managed again.
“I’m afraid I have bad news,” the deputy said, and I stepped backward, then half-sat, half-leaned on the edge of the hotel desk that I’d run into with the back of one thigh.
I couldn’t speak. I just stared at the man, his fair skin slightly freckled across the cheeks and nose, his grey eyes a little narrowly set and blinking rapidly, tongue licking lips that were slightly chapped, nervous.
There really was only one reason for someone in his position to benervous.
Nobody likes being the guy who has to notify next of kin.
My whole body was numb. My mouth was a desert. There was a slight sense of being trapped in a bell jar, an insect or mounted rodent displayed but cut off from the rest of the world.
“Your vehicle was found off the side of Scott-Christian Road, overturned and… burning.”
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.
Elliot.
“Were… Did he…” I couldn’t ask it.
“The vehicle was still too hot for them to investigate,” came the reply. “But there was apparently no sign of the driver outside the vehicle.”
I couldn’t manage any words.
“We had assumed you were the driver,” he said. “And I was sent here here to— I assume the other gentleman was driving, then?”
I nodded.
“We’ll need some information from you,” he said. “So that we can confirm… identity.”
I nodded again, feeling nausea pressing at the back of my throat. I told him what he asked for.
Elliot Crane. Five-foot-eleven. One-hundred-eighty-seven pounds. Forty-two years old. Indigenous. Love of my life.I didn’t tell him that last one, even though it was the thing that was making me feel like someone had reached through my ribs and torn out my heart, leaving a gaping hole that would never stop bleeding.
“I am sorry,” the deputy said, awkwardly, when he’d put away his tablet. “Investigators will know more over the next few days.”
I nodded again, having no idea what else to do.
He closed the door when he left, and the click made me flinch.
“Mrow?”
I jumped again.
And then the tears came, dragging me off the desk and down onto the floor, my knees drawn up against my chest as it cracked in two.
