The Beginning of After

traffic light not too far beyond it, and slam on the brakes. I looked at the northbound lane, and thought of how another person might lose control and let their car go over the double yellow line and make someone swerve off the road to avoid them.
    “What if we can’t find it?” I asked.
    “We’ll get close enough,” he said confidently, determined. When we saw the traffic light up in the distance, I scanned the road but wasn’t sure what I was looking for. I guess I just expected to know .
    David pulled the car into the breakdown lane and we sat there, listening to the gusty breath of the dashboard heater. It was almost midnight, and there weren’t many cars on the road.
    I peered out the window but it all looked unremarkable, until David said, “There. Look.”
    I followed his gaze to a speed limit sign about twenty yards ahead of us. It had a thick purple ribbon wrapped around it, which even in the dark looked faded and old. Then I remembered Nana telling me that there’d been a little makeshift memorial at the accident scene for several weeks after, with people bringing candles and flowers. Toby’s classmates left notes, which the police eventually collected and gave to Nana. Who then put them in his dresser, unread.
    “You think that’s it?” I asked.
    “Yes,” he said. He got out of the car, so I did too. And the first thing I saw was how the side of the road sloped down steeply here, several hundred feet, before leveling out into woods.
    The ditch where my family had actually died. I had to catch my breath when I saw it, and realized it wasn’t at all what I’d pictured. I wasn’t sure what I’d been afraid of for so long, and just being there made me feel stronger.
    David walked to the edge of the slope and looked down, his face blank. He pulled an object out of his front jeans pocket, kissed it, and threw it as far as he could. I couldn’t see what it was.
    Was there something I was supposed to do or say, standing here above this place? All I could think was, Now I’ve seen it, and I owed them that . It was like a favor I’d just returned.
    And then, unexpectedly, I started to feel glad I was there.
    I hadn’t visited my family’s graves since the funeral. There wouldn’t be anything there until April, the one-year anniversary, because Nana was sticking to Jewish tradition in the headstone department. And it didn’t feel like I needed to go anywhere to be with them. They were still in every inch of space at our house, around our house, and every other place I went.
    But this was where they had gone away. It was where it had all changed. A place where I could say everything, or nothing at all.
    It suddenly seemed enough for me to say, silently in my head, I just love you all so much .
    David came over to where I stood, and kicked at a pebble. “That’s done.”
    “I’m freezing,” I said.
    Everything else was too big for words.
    We got back into the car, which thankfully he’d kept running, so the warmth was a sweet relief. David put his hands on the wheel but did nothing else. We sat there, looking out at the charcoal gray sky through the windshield.
    “When we told my dad that Mom’s gone . . . ,” he said. “Seeing him deal with that, so new and everything . . . it was like the past eight months never happened for me. It was like losing her all over again.”
    I reached out, unafraid, and touched his hair. He didn’t look at me, but he didn’t stop me as I started to stroke it. “Your mom was cool,” I said.
    David nodded. “You wouldn’t know it from looking at her, but she was. I only see that now, of course. She got me. She put up with a lot of stuff that most moms wouldn’t, to make up for what Dad was doing.”
    I pulled my hand away involuntarily. “What was he doing?”
    I must have sounded really nervous because David laughed. “Nothing like that, nothing you’d see in a TV movie or something. He just didn’t like me, and he wasn’t afraid to show it. Although he did hit me once and I got a big bruise, right here.” He touched the corner of one eye, and I remembered David showing up at school with a shiner, telling people he’d gotten into a fight at a party.
    “I deserved it,” he continued. “We were both drunk and I totally provoked him. Nice, huh? Real sweet suburban family. I guess he got an involuntary rehab with this whole thing.”
    We were quiet for a moment and then I asked him, “So you think you’ll stay?”
    It wasn’t