The Man I Hit On My Wedding Day

“The one Doc told me about.”

I went home that night with my boots smelling like a barn and blood under my nails, and I stood in my mother’s kitchen and cried, because I had not known how much of myself I had handed over until somebody handed it back.

When the sling came off in August, I figured that was the end of it. He did not need a driver anymore.

He was waiting on the clinic step that last morning with two coffees and a piece of paper. It was a job offer, written out by hand, for head technician. The salary was more than Doc ever paid me.

“This isn’t because you feel sorry for me,” I said.

“Tessa, you hit me with a car,” he said. “If anybody here gets to feel sorry for anybody, it’s me. I’m hiring you because you’re the best tech in four counties and I’d be a fool not to.”

I took the job. I want it understood that he did not so much as hold my hand again that entire summer. Not since the hospital. He opened doors and he passed me coffee and he said good night from his side of the truck. He told me later he had decided, lying in that bed, that a woman who had just walked out of one man’s plans did not need to be hurried into another’s.

It nearly killed me. But he was right.

The Letter

In September, Preston tried one more adjustment.

A letter came to the clinic, addressed to Dr. Luke Callahan, from a law firm in Wichita that I knew handled the Vance dealerships. Luke read it standing at the front counter. Then he read it again. Then he folded it, put it in his shirt pocket, and asked if I wanted lunch.

We went to the Wheatland Cafe, which at noon on a weekday holds about half of Harlow. Preston was there. He was at the counter with two of his salesmen, four stools down, and he did not turn around when we came in, but his shoulders knew.

Luke did not take a booth. He walked up to the counter and sat on a stool, and took the letter out, and unfolded it on the Formica.

“Preston,” he said, friendly, in a voice that carried. “I got your attorney’s letter. I wanted to make sure I’m reading it right.”

The cafe went quiet the way a barn does when a hawk goes over.

“It says here a firm in Wichita will represent me at no cost to myself, if I’d like to sue Tessa Moran for my injuries. It says they’d go after her savings, her wages, and her interest in her mother’s farm. It says somebody’s already agreed to cover the fees.” He looked up. “It doesn’t say who. But I figured you’d know, since it’s your firm.”

Preston turned around on the stool. His ears had gone red. “That’s a private legal matter.”