Iremember that I was screaming even before I brought the car to a halt.  I recall the impact, of course—the slight shudder of the wheel and the nauseating thud. But what I remember most are my own screams from inside the car. They were ear-shattering, echoing off the closed windows, and they went on until I turned the ignition off and was finally able to push open the door. My screams then turned into panicked prayer. “No, no, no . . .” is all I remember saying.

Barely able to breathe, I ran to the front of the car. I didn’t see any damage:

The car was, as I said, an older model, one structured to withstand more impact than the cars of today. But I didn’t see the body. I had a sudden premonition that I’d run over her, that I’d find her body wedged beneath the car, and as the horrible vision passed in front of my eyes, I felt my stomach muscles constrict.  Now, I’ll tell you that I’m not the kind of person who is easily rattled—people often comment on my self-control—but I confess that at that moment I put my hands on my knees and nearly vomited. As the feeling finally subsided, I forced myself to look beneath the car. I didn’t see anything.

I ran from side to side, looking for her. I didn’t see her, not right away, and I had a strange sense that maybe I’d been mistaken, that it must have been my imagination.

I started to jog then, checking one side of the road and then the other, hoping against hope that somehow I’d simply grazed her, that maybe she’d merely been knocked unconscious. I looked behind the car and still didn’t find her, and I knew then where she had to be.

As my stomach started doing flip-flops again, my eyes scanned the area in front of the car. My headlights were still on. I took a few hesitant steps forward, and it was then that I spotted her in the ditch, about twenty yards away.  I debated whether I should run to the nearest house and call an ambulance or whether I should go to her. At the time, the latter seemed like the right thing to do, and as I approached, I found myself moving more and more slowly, as if slowing down would make the outcome less certain.

Her body, I noticed right off, was lying at an unnatural angle. One leg looked bent somehow, sort of crossed over the other at the thigh, the knee twisted at an impossible angle and the foot facing the wrong way. One arm was sandwiched beneath her torso, the other above her head. She was on her back.  Her eyes were open.

I remember that it didn’t strike me that she was dead, at least in that first instant. But it didn’t take more than a couple of seconds to realize that there was something about the glaze in her eyes that wasn’t right. They didn’t seem real—they were almost a caricature of the way eyes look, like the eyes of a mannequin in a department store window. But as I stared, I think it was their utter stillness that really drove the point home. In all the time I stood above her, she didn’t blink at all.

It was then that I noticed the blood pooling beneath her head, and everything sort of hit at once—her eyes, the position of her body, the blood . . .  And for the first time, I knew with certainty that she was dead.  I think I collapsed then. I can’t remember making the conscious decision to get close to her, but that’s exactly where I found myself a moment later. I put my ear to her chest, I put my ear to her mouth, I checked for a pulse. I checked for any movement at all, any flicker of life, anything to prod me to further action.

There was nothing.

Later, the autopsy would show—and the newspapers would report—that she died instantly. I say this so that you’ll know I’m telling the truth. Missy Ryan had no chance at all, no matter what I might have done later.  I don’t know how long I stayed beside her, but it couldn’t have............