Ryan Anderson woke up before the arm.

  Not because he wanted to.

  Because someone was standing on his chest.

  “Dad.”

  A small hand poked his cheek.

  “Dad.”

  Ryan groaned and cracked one eye open.

  Morning light slipped through the blinds, drawing pale gold stripes across the bedroom walls. The ceiling fan turned slowly above him.

  Lucy stood on the mattress beside him like a tiny conquering general.

  His seven-year-old daughter grinned down at him, her hair sticking out in every direction like she had been electrocuted in her sleep.

  “Dad.”

  He sighed.

  “Good morning, princess.”

  Lucy immediately colpsed onto his chest like she had just won a wrestling match.

  Ryan wheezed.

  “Oh good,” he muttered. “Crushed lungs. My favorite way to wake up.”

  Lucy giggled and poked his cheek again.

  “Mom said you’re still sleeping.”

  Ryan closed his eyes again.

  “Your mom says a lot of things.”

  Lucy leaned closer.

  “Dad.”

  “What.”

  “You’re awake.”

  He opened both eyes and stared at her.

  “Lucy.”

  “Yes?”

  “You woke me up.”

  “Yes.”

  “And now you’re telling me I’m awake.”

  “Yes.”

  Ryan rubbed his face.

  “Great system.”

  Lucy beamed proudly.

  From somewhere down the hallway came the unmistakable sound of two boys arguing.

  “YOU ATE ALL OF IT.”

  “I DID NOT.”

  “THERE’S TWO LEFT.”

  “THAT WAS FROM YESTERDAY.”

  Ryan sighed and sat up slowly.

  “The goblins are awake.”

  Lucy grabbed his arm.

  “Can we have waffles?”

  Ryan squinted at her.

  “You’re asking me because you don't like what mom is cooking.”

  She nodded immediately.

  Ryan sighed.

  “I respect the honesty.”

  The smell of bacon drifted down the hallway.

  Ryan followed it like a man guided by divine revetion.

  The kitchen was already bright with morning sunlight. Emma stood at the stove flipping bacon in a pan while eggs cooked beside it. She had clearly been up for a while.

  Her brown hair was tied into a loose bun and she was wearing leggings and one of Ryan’s old college shirts.

  Jacob and Tyler stood at the counter arguing over a cereal box like two rival politicians.

  Ryan leaned against the doorway watching for a moment.

  Emma gnced over her shoulder and smiled.

  “Happy Father’s Day.”

  Ryan blinked.

  “Oh.”

  Right.

  Father’s Day.

  He hadn’t even remembered.

  Ryan walked up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist.

  Emma ughed softly when he pulled her closer.

  “Morning.”

  He kissed her cheek.

  Then again.

  Slower this time.

  Emma leaned back into him comfortably while she stirred the eggs.

  “You’re supposed to stay in bed,” she said.

  “That was the pn.”

  “What happened?”

  Ryan pointed toward the hallway.

  “Lucy decred war.”

  Right on cue Lucy climbed onto a chair at the table.

  “Can we have waffles?”

  Emma blinked.

  “I’m making eggs and bacon.”

  Lucy nodded seriously.

  “But God would want us to have waffles.”

  Ryan ughed quietly into Emma’s shoulder.

  “That’s my girl. So maniputive."

  Emma flipped the bacon over revealing dark a dark crusted side.

  "Looking a little dark, don't you think," Ryan teased.

  "Well you know how I like my meat."

  "Burnt?" Emma gred at him. Then her eyes rexed and tiptoed close to his ear.

  "Hard."

  "Eh. Mm."Ryan cleared his throat. "Well that can be arranged tonight."

  "Mmm can't wait." Emma said seductivly.

  At the counter Jacob pointed at Tyler.

  “He ate all the Cinnamon Crunch.”

  Tyler crossed his arms.

  “I did not.”

  Ryan let go of his love and opened a cabinet and grabbed another cereal box.

  “Problem solved.”

  Jacob frowned.

  “That’s Raisin Bran.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s not cereal.”

  Ryan poured himself a gss of orange juice.

  “That’s breakfast.”

  Lucy continued coloring something at the table.

  Emma slid a pte of eggs toward Ryan.

  “Sit down.”

  Ryan raised an eyebrow.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  He sat.

  Jacob attempted to pour milk.

  Tyler hovered beside him like a commentator.

  “You’re tilting it wrong.”

  “I’m pouring milk.”

  “You’re doing it wrong.”

  Ryan watched them for a second before chuckling.

  “You boys realize something?”

  They both looked at him.

  “What?” Tyler asked.

  Ryan gestured toward the kitchen.

  “Your mother is making a full breakfast.”

  “Yeah?” Jacob said.

  Ryan pointed at himself.

  “And you woke me up.”

  Lucy paused.

  The boys paused.

  Emma paused.

  Ryan took a slow bite of eggs.

  “What day is it?”

  Tyler frowned.

  “Sunday.”

  Jacob’s eyes widened slightly.

  Lucy gasped.

  “Oh no.”

  Emma covered her mouth trying not to ugh.

  Jacob looked horrified.

  “Wait.”

  Tyler’s face went pale.

  “Oh.”

  Lucy slid off her chair and ran over to Ryan.

  “HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!”

  She hugged him with full force.

  Ryan ughed and hugged her back.

  “Thank you, princess.”

  Jacob rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly.

  “Happy Father’s Day, Dad.”

  Tyler nodded.

  “Yeah… sorry.”

  Ryan waved them off.

  “Rex. I thought it was Tuesday.”

  Emma shook her head smiling.

  “You’re kidding, he's kidding. Boys don't you have something.”

  "Right!" Tyler gasped.

  Ryan grinned, as the boys ran to their room and back with a basket full of chocote candies.

  “Aw, heck yeah I love snickers. Thank you.” Ryan picked up the candy and set it aside. He then hugged each kid individually making sure to squeeze Lucy till she gasped.

  "Ahhh... can't...breath...i'm dieing," she gasped as she escaped from the hug.

  After breakfast the house shifted into its usual Sunday routine.

  Church mornings were always slightly chaotic.

  Dress clothes appeared.

  Shoes went missing.

  Hairbrushes became weapons.

  Ryan adjusted his tie in the hallway mirror while Jacob wrestled with his own.

  “How do you do this?” Jacob compined.

  “Practice.”

  “It’s strangling me.”

  “That’s the spirit of formal clothing.”

  Lucy twirled in her dress.

  “Do I look fancy?”

  Ryan gave a dramatic nod.

  “Very fancy.”

  Tyler frowned at his shoes.

  “I hate church shoes.”

  Ryan shrugged.

  “Everyone does.”

  Emma stepped into the hallway adjusting her earrings.

  “Ready?”

  Ryan smiled at her.

  “Almost.” He leaned forward and gave her a kiss. "Ready."

  She smiled, then looked at the kids.

  “Everybody don't forget your scriptures.”

  Groans echoed through the house.

  Ryan ughed quietly.

  "Kids." He ughed silently to his wife. She replied with rolling her eyes.

  Ryan grabbed his scriptures off the entry table with one hand and Lucy’s little floral set with the other before she could forget it on the couch for the third Sunday in a row.

  “You forgot these,” he said.

  Lucy froze halfway to the front door. “I was testing you.”

  “Of course you were.”

  Jacob came down the hall still tugging at his tie like it had personally insulted him. Tyler followed behind him, hair combed mostly in the right direction, carrying his shoes in one hand.

  Emma put both hands on her hips. “Why are your shoes not on your feet?”

  Tyler looked down at them like he had only just noticed they existed.

  “They hurt.”

  “They’re shoes,” Jacob said. “That’s their whole thing.”

  “Then I think shoes are a bad invention.”

  Ryan opened the front door and motioned grandly. “Alright, disciples. Into the van. Let us go be reverent.”

  Lucy skipped past him.

  Tyler muttered, “That sounds fake.”

  Ryan shut the door behind them and pointed toward the driveway. “You sound fake.”

  Emma ughed under her breath as she locked the door.

  The morning air was warm already, the sun bright but not yet mean. Their neighborhood was quiet in the sleepy Sunday way, a few cars backing out of driveways, a couple walking their dog, sprinklers hissing in the distance. Ryan stood for a second while the kids piled into the van, just taking it in.

  Emma came up beside him and touched his arm.

  “What?”

  He gnced at her and smiled. “Nothing. Just feels nice out.”

  She studied him for half a second, then nodded. “It does.”

  They climbed into the van and Ryan started the engine. Instantly the car filled with the usual noise.

  “Lucy touched me.”

  “I did not.”

  “You did with your hair.”

  “My hair is part of me.”

  Jacob groaned. “Please stop talking.”

  “Make me,” Tyler said.

  Ryan backed out of the driveway. “I will turn this very spiritual vehicle around.”

  “No you won’t,” Jacob said.

  Ryan looked at him in the rearview mirror. “Bold.”

  Emma covered a smile with her hand.

  The drive to church only took about ten minutes, and by the time they pulled into the parking lot, the lot was already half full. Men in white shirts and ties, women in dresses, kids darting between cars while parents tried to pretend the Sabbath had not immediately become cardio.

  Ryan parked near the side of the building. The brick chapel sat in the sun looking exactly like every church building he had ever attended and somehow still like its own specific pce at the same time. Familiar. Ordinary. Safe.

  He got out and came around to help Lucy with her seatbelt, though she insisted she could do it herself.

  “I know you can,” he said. “I’m still faster.”

  “I’m almost eight.”

  “You’re seven.”

  “I’m close.”

  “That is true.”

  Emma was already smoothing Lucy’s hair with her fingers and straightening the bow on the front of her dress. Jacob and Tyler stood nearby with the miserable dignity of boys wearing church shoes against their will.

  Ryan reached out and fixed Jacob’s tie knot where it had drifted sideways.

  “Thanks,” Jacob muttered.

  Tyler looked up. “Can you fix mine too?”

  Ryan smiled. “I thought you were too cool for help.”

  “I’m not cool,” Tyler said. “I’m suffering.”

  “Fair.”

  Ryan fixed Tyler’s tie, then opened the chapel door and held it while the family walked in.

  Cool air hit them first, carrying the faint smell of carpet, old hymnbooks, and something sweet from the foyer table where somebody had set out a pte of mints. People were already gathered in clusters, talking in low Sunday voices. Brother Jensen, who looked like he had been sixty-five for Ryan’s entire life, waved from near the bulletin board. Sister Howard knelt to compliment Lucy’s dress. A teenager in a white shirt hurried past holding a tray of sacrament cups like he was transporting unstable explosives.

  “Happy Father’s Day, Brother Anderson,” Brother Jensen called.

  Ryan smiled and shook his hand. “Thanks, brother.”

  Sister Howard turned to Emma. “You clean up your crew nice.”

  Emma gave the sort of gracious smile that came from years of surviving church hallways with children. “Thank you. It only required three threats and one bribe.”

  Ryan leaned in toward Jacob and whispered, “That’s true leadership.”

  Jacob tried not to ugh and failed.

  They found a pew near the middle. Not too close to the front, where every fidget looked louder. Not too close to the back, where children seemed to absorb chaos from the walls.

  Lucy scooted in first and immediately began arranging her crayons, notebook, and stuffed pencil pouch like she was setting up a field hospital. Jacob sat on Ryan’s other side, already flipping through his scriptures because he liked to look prepared even when he was not. Tyler slouched down beside Emma and looked around with the expression of a man entering a long but survivable prison sentence.

  The prelude music drifted through the chapel, soft piano filling the room while people settled in.

  Ryan rested one arm along the back of the pew behind Emma and Lucy. Emma leaned just slightly into him. Not enough for anyone else to notice, but enough.

  He loved that. The tiny nguage of being married a long time. The quiet touches. The gnces that meant whole conversations. The way she reached over now and smoothed the front of his tie without even looking at him.

  “What?” he whispered.

  “It was crooked.”

  “Wow. So judgmental on the Sabbath.”

  Emma did not look up from the program. “Be reverent.”

  He smiled.

  Sacrament meeting began the way it always did, with announcements that half the congregation missed because they were still sitting down, shushing children, or trying to locate dropped crayons. Ryan stood for the opening hymn with Lucy on his left and Tyler mumbling the words one full second behind everyone else.

  Lucy sang every line with complete conviction and very little accuracy.

  Jacob sang quieter, still at that age where he could not decide if singing counted as embarrassing.

  Ryan sang because he always had, because some habits went deeper than mood. The melody was familiar enough to live in his bones. For a moment, with the organ humming and his family on either side of him, he felt something settle inside him. Something calm.

  The sacrament prayers followed. Bread passed hand to hand. Tiny cups of water. The simple, sacred rhythm of it had always meant something to him. Maybe more now than when he was younger. Back then, reverence had often felt like performance. Sit straight. Fold arms. Say the right things.

  Now it felt more like returning.

  A weekly pause.

  A reminder that life was not only deadlines and grocery lists and rising rent and work messages about AI writing half a patch.

  Ryan bowed his head for a moment after taking the bread. Across the pew, Tyler was trying very hard not to stare at the trays. Lucy held her cup with both hands like it was fragile treasure. Emma sat with her eyes lowered, peaceful in a way Ryan envied.

  He remembered his mission then, not because the speaker mentioned it, but because Sundays had once felt so different. Long streets. A too-tight tie in summer heat. Testimony in another person’s living room. The ache of homesickness mixed with purpose. He had been nineteen and sure that life was opening forward in a straight line.

  Now he was thirty-two with a wife, three kids, a half-decent suit, and lower back stiffness that felt deeply unfair.

  He would not have traded this life.

  Still, sometimes he missed being on his way to something unknown.

  The first speaker was a young deacon who talked about obedience with the grave seriousness of a boy trying not to forget his note card. Lucy drew flowers in the margin of her program. Tyler leaned over halfway through and whispered, “How much longer?”

  Emma gave him The Look.

  Tyler sank back down.

  Ryan hid a smile behind his hand.

  The second speaker was a woman from the ward speaking about fatherhood and eternal families. That got everybody’s attention for obvious reasons. She spoke warmly, telling a story about her own dad teaching her to pray when she was little, then tied it into Father’s Day and the blessing of righteous fathers in the home.

  Ryan shifted a little at that.

  Not because he disliked it. Just because he always felt odd hearing fatherhood talked about like some gleaming title he was supposed to wear perfectly. Most days he felt less like a noble patriarch and more like a guy trying to remember school schedules and not lose his temper when somebody wiped syrup on the couch.

  Emma must have sensed it, because she quietly rested her hand on his knee.

  He looked over.

  She did not turn her head, but her thumb pressed once against his leg.

  You’re fine, that touch said.

  You’re doing better than you think.

  His throat tightened unexpectedly.

  He looked forward again and listened while the speaker talked about love showing itself in ordinary sacrifices, in consistency, in presence.

  That part he could believe.

  When the meeting ended, the congregation rose in a slow rustle of fabric and voices. Immediately the children seemed to regain full access to their limbs.

  Lucy looked up at him. “Was I good?”

  Ryan pretended to think very hard. “Mostly.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Dad.”

  “You were great.”

  She smiled and reached for his hand.

  In the hallway after the meeting, they were stopped every twelve feet by someone offering a handshake, a greeting, or a reminder about some upcoming activity. A few people wished Ryan happy Father’s Day. One older sister told him she always loved seeing his family together because they brought such a sweet spirit.

  Ryan thanked her, feeling both grateful and vaguely fraudulent, because ten minutes earlier Tyler had nearly flicked a sacrament cup across the chapel out of boredom.

  Primary for Lucy. Sunday School for the boys. Adult css for him and Emma.

  At the cssroom door, Lucy looked back and suddenly wrapped herself around Ryan’s leg.

  “I don’t want to go in by myself.”

  “You know everybody in there.”

  “I know, but I want you.”

  Ryan bent and lifted her, settling her on his hip even though she was getting a little big for it.

  “You’ll be okay.”

  She pressed her face into his shoulder for a second. “Will you come get me after?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  She pulled back enough to inspect his face. Apparently satisfied, she kissed his cheek and let him set her down.

  Emma smiled as Lucy ran inside.

  “She has you wrapped around her finger.”

  Ryan watched the cssroom door swing shut. “Yes.”

  “You don’t even deny it.”

  “There is no point.”

  Their Sunday School css was on the family, which felt on-theme. Ryan sat beside Emma in the folding chair cssroom while the teacher wrote phrases on the whiteboard in careful block letters. Halfway through, Emma passed him a mint from her purse like they were sharing contraband. He took it with a whispered thanks.

  At one point the teacher asked what helped people keep faith in difficult seasons of life.

  A few hands went up.

  Prayer.

  Scripture study.

  Temple attendance.

  Service.

  Ryan listened without volunteering, his own answer sitting quietly in his chest.

  His family.

  Not because they made life easy. They absolutely did not.

  Because they made it matter.

  When church finally ended and they gathered the kids from their csses, the sun outside had climbed high and bright. The parking lot shimmered faintly with heat.

  Tyler loosened his tie the second they reached the van.

  Jacob said, “Can we change when we get home?”

  Emma answered before Ryan could. “After we eat.”

  Lucy climbed into her seat and sighed dramatically. “I’m so hungry I might pass away.”

  Ryan buckled his seatbelt and looked at her in the rearview mirror. “Please hold off until after lunch.”

  “I’ll try.”

  As he backed out of the parking space, Emma rested her hand on his arm for a second.

  “Happy Father’s Day,” she said quietly, with the kids already arguing in the back and the ordinary noise of life rushing back in around them.

  Ryan gnced at her, then at his children in the mirror.

  His whole life was in this car.

  Messy.

  Loud.

  Sacred.

  He smiled. “Best one I’ve had so far.”

  "You say that every year," Emma mused.

  "True every year." Emma leaned over the center console and kissed him.

  Ryan smiled against the kiss.

  It was quick because the boys were right there and Lucy had the kind of eyes that noticed everything, but it still lingered in the way Emma’s hand stayed on his shoulder a second longer than it needed to. The sort of touch that said ten years and still here. Still choosing you.

  Then Tyler made a dramatic choking noise from the back seat.

  “Oh my gosh.”

  Jacob groaned. “Can you two not do that in front of human beings?”

  Lucy gasped. “I saw romance.”

  Ryan ughed and put the van in drive.

  “You’ll all survive.”

  “That remains to be seen,” Jacob muttered.

  Emma sat back in her seat, smiling to herself as she buckled in fully. Sunlight fshed across her earrings when they turned onto the main road. Ryan rested one hand on the wheel and let the other fall for a second onto her knee before bringing it back.

  The roads were mostly clear. Sunday traffic. Sparse and zy. A few families heading home from church. A pickup at the light. A cyclist further down the shoulder. The town looked soft around the edges in the noon heat, washed bright and familiar.

  From the back, Lucy let out another exaggerated sigh.

  “I’m starving.”

  “You have said that six times,” Tyler said.

  “It’s getting more true.”

  Ryan gnced in the mirror. “You still alive back there?”

  “Barely,” Lucy said weakly.

  “She’s being dramatic,” Jacob said.

  “I learned from Dad.”

  Ryan put a hand to his chest. “Unfair but accurate.”

  Emma snorted.

  They stopped at a red light near the edge of downtown. Ryan drummed his fingers on the wheel while Tyler tried to untie his tie without taking it off over his head like some kind of wild animal.

  “You’re stretching it out,” Emma said.

  “I’m freeing myself.”

  “You’re destroying it.”

  “Same difference.”

  Jacob looked out the window. “Can we get burgers?”

  “We have food at home,” Emma said automatically.

  “Because that answer has stopped us before,” Ryan said.

  Emma gave him a look.

  He held up a hand. “I’m just saying. It is Father’s Day.”

  Lucy immediately straightened. “Yeah.”

  Tyler leaned forward between the seats. “Yeah.”

  Jacob narrowed his eyes. “You’re both using Father’s Day for burger-reted corruption.”

  Ryan considered that. “I support this corruption.”

  Emma folded her arms, but he could see the smile trying to happen.

  “So all three of you pnned this?”

  “No,” Jacob said.

  “Yes,” Tyler said at the same time.

  Jacob turned and stared at him. “Traitor.”

  The light changed.

  Ryan drove through the intersection, still smiling.

  He took the longer road home because it passed the little burger pce near the highway. Not the chain one. The local pce with faded red trim and milkshakes thick enough to count as a trial from God. The kids cheered when they realized where he was going.

  “You knew,” Lucy accused Emma.

  Emma sighed with theatrical patience. “I live among schemers.”

  Ryan gnced at her. “And yet you stay.”

  “For the health insurance.”

  “We do not have good health insurance.”

  “Exactly.”

  He ughed.

  The burger pce was only another few minutes away. They crossed through the older part of town where the nes widened near the light industrial district. Fewer houses. More warehouses. Long stretches of road bordered by chain-link fences and gravel lots. The sky above was a wide, cloudless blue.

  Ryan barely noticed the semi at first.

  To his right all he saw was a white cab pulling a long silver trailer. It sat farther up the cross street at the intersection where the feeder road met the highway route. Trucks came through here all the time. Deliveries, regional freight, the quiet machinery of everyday life moving goods around while ordinary people barely thought about it.

  Ryan was driving straight through the intersection. Their light was green.

  The cross street had the red.

  Emma was saying something about whether they should call her parents ter. Tyler was arguing that curly fries were objectively superior. Lucy had spotted a dog in another car and was trying to get everyone to look at it before the light changed.

  Ryan gnced right again.

  The semi was moving.

  Not slowing.

  Moving fast.

  His brain hesitated for a heartbeat, trying to make sense of it.

  The truck was in the ne that had the red light. It should have been braking. It should have been rolling to a stop at the intersection.

  It wasn't.

  The semi kept coming.

  The huge white cab surged forward toward the intersection like the driver hadn’t even seen the light.

  Ryan’s stomach dropped.

  Too fast.

  Way too fast.

  The truck blew through the red light without even touching the brakes.

  “Oh no,” Emma whispered.

  Everything inside Ryan snapped tight.

  He smmed the brake.

  The van screamed in protest as the tires locked.

  Rubber shrieked across pavement.

  The kids shouted in confusion behind him.

  Lucy squealed as the van lurched violently forward.

  Ryan gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles went white. His brain fired through every option at once.

  Reverse.

  Turn left.

  Turn right.

  None of them worked.

  A car filled the ne beside them.

  A curb and utility pole boxed the other side.

  They were already in the intersection.

  And the semi was almost on top of them.

  The truck’s massive grill filled the windshield from the right side, growing bigger with terrifying speed.

  “Hold on!” Ryan shouted.

  Emma twisted in her seat instantly.

  “Hold on!”

  "Dad!" Tyler screamed.

  Time did the awful thing people always said it did.

  It slowed.

  Ryan saw everything.

  The bck streaks forming on the pavement as the van’s tires fought for grip.

  Emma reaching back toward the children even though her seatbelt locked her in pce.

  Jacob’s face draining white.

  Tyler’s mouth opening in a scream Ryan could no longer hear.

  Lucy clutching her little floral scriptures against her chest because she still hadn’t put them down after church.

  The semi driver.

  Both hands locked on the wheel.

  Eyes wide.

  Terrified.

  Ryan jerked the steering wheel left anyway.

  Some desperate instinct told him to turn the van, to angle it so the impact would hit him first.

  Maybe he could shield them.

  Maybe he could take the worst of it.

  Maybe—

  The semi smmed into the passenger side of the van at full highway speed.

  The impact was apocalyptic.

  Metal folded inward like paper.

  Gss exploded across the interior in a storm of glittering shards.

  The van lifted off the ground as if a giant hand had swatted it aside.

  Ryan felt the steering wheel rip violently in his grip, wrenching his shoulders as the vehicle spun.

  Emma screamed his name once.

  It was the worst sound he had ever heard.

  Then came the tumbling.

  Not driving.

  Not braking.

  Just chaos.

  The van rolled.

  Something smmed into Ryan’s shoulder.

  The side window burst inward.

  His head snapped sideways, filling his vision with white sparks.

  Another violent hit.

  Then another.

  The world shattered into fragments.

  Blue sky fshing past.

  Twisting metal.

  The roof colpsing.

  Lucy crying somewhere behind him.

  The horrible tearing scream of steel being crushed and dragged across pavement.

  A hymnbook from the back seat spinning through the air like a wounded bird.

  Then everything stopped.

  Not peacefully.

  Not quietly.

  The van settled with a heavy metallic groan, tipped sideways at an angle.

  Steam hissed.

  Somewhere nearby a car horn bred endlessly.

  Ryan blinked.

  For a moment he didn’t understand what he was looking at.

  The windshield was a spiderweb of cracks.

  Half of it was missing entirely.

  Bright daylight poured through the opening.

  Something warm ran down the side of his face.

  Blood.

  His blood.

  He tried to move.

  Pain exploded through his chest and ribs like fire.

  A broken sound escaped him.

  He tasted iron.

  The dashboard had colpsed inward.

  The steering column was crushed against his torso.

  His left arm felt wrong.

  Emma.

  The thought hit him like lightning.

  He turned his head.

  She was there.

  Still in her seat.

  The passenger side of the van had been obliterated.

  The door was gone.

  The side of the vehicle was crushed inward nearly to the center console.

  Emma was slumped against the twisted metal.

  Her head leaned at an unnatural angle against the frame.

  Blood streaked across her face.

  Her eyes were open.

  But there was nothing in them.

  Ryan stared.

  His mind refused to accept it.

  “Emma.”

  His voice came out wet and thin.

  No response.

  He tried again.

  “Emma.”

  Nothing.

  Behind him came a sound.

  A small, broken whimper.

  Lucy.

  Ryan’s heart lurched.

  “I’m here,” he rasped immediately, even though his voice shook. “I’m here, baby. Daddy’s here.”

  No answer from the boys.

  No voices.

  No movement.

  Just Lucy crying softly behind him.

  Ryan tried to twist around.

  The crushed seat held him in pce.

  “Jacob?” he called weakly.

  Nothing.

  “Tyler?”

  Silence.

  His stomach turned cold.

  Lucy’s crying slowly faded into tiny gasping breaths.

  Then even that stopped.

  Ryan stared forward again.

  Emma’s body hadn’t moved.

  Her hair hung loose over her face.

  Blood dripped slowly from the side of her head onto the crumpled door frame.

  Outside the van, people were shouting.

  Someone was running.

  A voice yelled for an ambunce.

  Ryan barely heard any of it.

  His world had shrunk to the inside of the wrecked vehicle.

  To the empty stillness behind him.

  To Emma.

  His chest hitched painfully.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  The words barely existed.

  His vision darkened slowly at the edges.

  The sky beyond the shattered windshield looked impossibly blue.

  It was still Father’s Day.

  He had woken up with Lucy standing on his chest.

  Emma had been making breakfast.

  The boys had run back with candy because they remembered.

  His whole life had been inside this van.

  And now it was gone.

  Ryan looked at Emma one st time.

  “Heavenly Father... why?” he whispered. The question soon to be answered.

  His vision faded completely.

  Darkness closed in.

  And Ryan Anderson died.