The Rest of Her Life

• Book Excerpt

When she imagined the interior of the Suburban in those final moments, she pictured the dog as a terrier mix, tan, for some reason, like Benji. Leigh never actually saw the dog. She didn’t even know about the dog and its involvement in the accident until much later, even though when the accident happened, she was just seven blocks away, teaching eighth grade English at the junior high, as she had been almost every school day for more than a decade. She was seven blocks away, and she had no idea it had happened. Just after the ambulance arrived, Kara used her cell phone to call her father’s office on campus. Gary wasn’t there, but the call had gone back to the English Department, and the secretary, hearing the distress in the caller’s voice, had tracked him down in a faculty meeting on a different floor. Gary told Leigh later that when he got on the phone, he didn’t recognize their daughter’s voice. She was crying hard, and it sounded as if she were shivering, which, he remembered thinking, made no sense on such a warm day. When he finally understood, he gave the phone to the secretary and ran across the neatly trimmed lawns of campus to the parking lot in his tie and jacket. He had not run so far and so quickly for many years, and when he finally got to his car, he had to stand still for a moment to catch his breath, his hand pressed hard against his heart.

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