Dear Scotty,
Your car was my favorite place to be. I don’t know if I ever told you that.
It was the only place we could get true solitude. I used to look forward to the days our schedules would align, and you’d pick me up from work. I’d get in your car and it was like feeling all the same welcoming comforts of home. You always had a soda waiting for me, and on the days you knew I hadn’t had dinner yet, you’d have a small order of fries from McDonald’s sitting in the cup holder because you knew they were my favorite fries.
You were sweet. You always did sweet things for me. Tiny little gestures here and there that most people don’t think of. You were more than I deserved, even though you’d argue with that.
I’ve gone over the day you died so many times, I once wrote every single second of that day down on paper. Most of it was an estimate, of course. I don’t know if I actually spent a minute and a half brushing my teeth that morning. Or if the break I took at work really was fifteen minutes to the second. Or if we really spent fifty-seven minutes at the party we went to that night.
I’m sure I’m off in my calculations by a few minutes here or there, but for the most part, I can account for everything that happened that day. Even the things I wish I could forget.
A guy you went to college with was having a party and you had been his roommate your freshman year, so you said you owed it to him to make an appearance. I was sad to have to be at the party, but in hindsight, I’m glad you got to see most of your friends that night. I know it probably meant something to them after you died.
Even though you had made an appearance, it wasn’t your scene anymore and I knew you didn’t want to be there. You were past the parties and starting to focus on the more important pieces of life. You had just started graduate school, and you spent your spare time either studying or with me.
I knew we wouldn’t be there long, so I found a chair in a corner of the living room and curled up into it while you made your rounds. I don’t know if you knew this, but I watched you for the entire fifty-seven minutes we were there. You were so magnetic. People’s eyes would light up when they would look at you. Crowds would gather around you, and when you’d spot someone you hadn’t yet greeted, you’d have this huge reaction and make them feel like the most important person at that party.
I don’t know if that’s something you practiced, but I have a feeling you didn’t even know you had that kind of power. The power to make people feel appreciated and important.
Around the fifty-sixth minute we were there, you spotted me sitting in the corner smiling at you. You walked over to me, ignoring everyone around you, and I suddenly found myself the focus of your sole attention.
You had me locked in your gaze, and I knew I was appreciated. I was important. You sat down next to me in the chair and you kissed my neck and whispered in my ear, “I’m sorry I left you alone.”
You didn’t leave me alone. I was with you the whole time.
“Do you want to leave now?” you asked.
“Not if you’re having fun.”
“Are you having fun?” you asked.
I shrugged. I could think of a lot more things that were more fun than that party. By the smile that spread across your face, I gathered you felt the same. “Want to go to the lake?”
I nodded because those were my three favorite things. That lake. Your car. You.
You stole a twelve pack of beers and we snuck out and you drove us to the lake.
We had a favorite spot where we’d go some nights. It was down a rural back road, and you said you knew of it because you used to go camping there with your friends. It wasn’t far from where I lived with roommates, so sometimes you’d show up at my apartment in the middle of the night and we’d go there and have sex on the dock, or in the water, or in your car. Sometimes we’d stay and watch the sunrise.
That particular night, we had the beer you had taken from the party and some leftover edibles you had bought off a friend the week before. We had the music turned up and we were making out in the water. We didn’t have sex that night. Sometimes we only made out, and I liked that about you so much, because one of the things I’ve always hated about relationships is how make-outs seem to stop when sex becomes a thing.
But with you, the make-outs were always just as special as the sex.
You kissed me in the water like it was the last time you would ever kiss me. I wonder if you had some sort of fear, or premonition, and that’s why you kissed me the way you did. Or maybe I only remember it so well because it was our last kiss.
We got out of the water and we were lying naked on the dock under the moonlight, the world spinning above our heads.
“I want meatloaf,” you said.
I laughed at you, because it was such a random thing to say. “Meatloaf?”
You grinned and said, “Yeah. Doesn’t that sound good? Meatloaf and mashed potatoes.” You sat up on the dock and handed me my dry shirt. “Let’s go to the diner.”
You’d had more to drink than me, so you asked me to drive. It wasn’t like us to drink and drive, but I think we felt invincible under that moonlight. We were young and in love, and surely no one dies when they’re at their happiest.
We were also high, so our decisions were slightly more impaired that night, but whatever the reason, you asked me to drive. And for whatever reason, I didn’t tell you I shouldn’t.
I got in that car, knowing I had tripped on the gravel as I reached for the door. I still got behind the wheel, even though I had to blink really hard to make sure the car was in drive and not in reverse. And I still chose to drive us away from the lake, even though I was too drunk to remember how to turn down the volume. Coldplay was blasting so loud over the radio it was making my ears hurt.
We didn’t even get very far before it happened. You knew the roads better than I did. They were gravel, and I was going too fast, and I didn’t know the turn was so sharp.
You said, “Slow down,” but you said it kind of loud, and it startled me, so I slammed on the brakes, but I know now that slamming on brakes on a gravel-top road can make you lose complete control of the car, especially when you’re drunk. I was turning the wheel to the right, but the car kept going to the left, like it was slipping on ice.
A lot of people are lucky after a wreck because they don’t remember the details. They have recollections of things that happened before the wreck, and after the wreck, but over time, every single second of that night has come back to me, whether I wanted it to or not.
The top was down on your convertible, and all I can remember when I felt the car hit the ditch and begin to tilt was that we needed to protect our faces, because I was worried the glass from the windshield might cut us.
That was my biggest fear in that moment. A little bit of glass. I didn’t see my life flash before my eyes. I didn’t even see your life flash before my eyes. All I worried about in that moment was what would happen to the windshield.
Because surely no one dies when they’re at their happiest.
I felt my whole world tilt, and then I felt gravel against my cheek.
The radio was still blasting Coldplay.
The engine was still running.
My breath had caught in my throat and I couldn’t even scream, but I didn’t think I needed to. I just kept thinking about your car and how mad you probably were. I remember whispering, “I’m so sorry,” like your biggest concern would be that we would have to call a tow truck.
Everything happened so fast, but I was calm in that moment. I thought you were, too. I was waiting for you to ask me if I was okay, but we were upside down in a convertible, and everything I’d had to drink that night was flipping over in my stomach, and I felt the weight of gravity like I had never felt it before. I thought I was going to puke and needed to right myself up, so I struggled to find my seat belt, and when I finally clicked it, I remember falling. It was only a couple of inches, but it was unexpected and I let out a yelp.
You still didn’t ask me if I was okay.
It was dark, and I realized we might be trapped, so I reached over and touched your arm to follow you out. I knew you’d find a way out. I relied on you for everything, and your presence was the only reason I was still calm. I wasn’t even worried about your car anymore because I knew you’d be more worried about me than your car.
And it’s not like I was speeding too much, or driving too recklessly. I was only a little bit drunk and a little bit high, but so very stupid to believe even a little bit wasn’t too much.
We only flipped over because we hit a deep ditch, and since the top wasn’t even up, I thought surely it would be minimal damage. Maybe a week or two in the shop, and then the car I loved so much, the car that felt like home, would be fine. Like you. Like me.
“Scotty.” I shook your arm when I said your name that time. I wanted you to know I was okay. I thought maybe you were in shock, and that’s why you were so quiet.
When you didn’t move, and I realized your arm was just dangling against the road that had somehow become our ceiling, my first thought was that you might have passed out. But when I pulled my hand back to figure out a way to right myself up, it was covered in blood.
Blood that was supposed to be running through your veins.
I couldn’t grasp that. I couldn’t fathom that a silly wreck on the side of a county road that landed us in a ditch could actually hurt us. But that was your blood.
I immediately scooted closer to you, and because you were upside down and still in your seat belt, I couldn’t pull you to me. I tried, but you wouldn’t budge. I turned your face to mine, but you looked like you were sleeping. Your lips were slightly parted and your eyes were closed, and you looked so much like you looked all the times I spent the night with you and woke up to find you asleep next to me.
I tried pulling you, but you still wouldn’t budge because the car was on top of part of you. Your shoulder and your arm were trapped, and I couldn’t pull you out or get to your seat belt and even though it was dark, I realized moonlight reflects off of blood the same way it reflects off the ocean.
Your blood was everywhere. The entire car being upside down made everything even more confusing. Where were your pockets? Where was your phone? I needed a phone, so I scrambled and felt around with my hands, looking for a phone for what felt like an eternity, but all I could find were rocks and glass.
The whole time, I was muttering your name through chattering teeth. “Scotty. Scotty, Scotty, Scotty.” It was a prayer, but I didn’t know how to pray. No one had ever taught me. I just remember the prayer you had given over family dinner at your parents’ house, and the prayers I used to hear my foster mother, Mona, pray. But all I’d ever heard people do was bless food, and I just wanted you to wake up, so I said your name over and over and hoped God would hear me, even though I wasn’t sure if I was getting his attention.
It certainly felt like no one was paying us attention that night.
What I experienced in those moments was indescribable. You think you know how you’ll react in a terrifying situation, but that’s the thing. You can’t think in a terrifying situation. There’s probably a reason for how disconnected we become to our own thoughts in moments of sheer horror. But that’s exactly how I felt. Disconnected. Parts of me were moving without my brain even knowing what was happening. My hands were searching around for things I wasn’t even sure I was looking for.
I was growing hysterical, because with each passing second, I became more aware of how different my life would be going forward. How that one second had altered whatever course we were on, and things would never be the same, and all the parts of me that had become disconnected in that wreck would never fully reconnect.
I crawled out of the car through the space between the ground and my door, and once I was outside and standing right-side-up, I puked.
The headlights were shining on a row of trees, but none of that light was helping us, and then I ran around to the passenger side of the car to free you, but I couldn’t. There was your arm, sticking out from under the car. The moonlight glimmering in your blood. I grabbed your hand and squeezed it, but it was cold. I was still muttering your name. “Scotty, Scotty, Scotty, no, no, no.” I went around to the windshield and tried kicking it to break it, but even though it was already cracked, I couldn’t break it enough to fit through it, or pull you out.
I knelt down and pressed my face to the glass and I saw what I had done to you then. It was a stark realization that no matter how much you love someone, you can still do despicable things to them.
It was like a wave of the most intense pain you could ever imagine rolled right over me. My body rolled with it. It started at my head and I curled in on myself, all the way to my toes. I groaned, and I sobbed, and when I went back around the car to touch your hand again, there was nothing. No pulse in your wrist. No heartbeat in your palm. No warmth in your fingertips.
I screamed. I screamed so much, I stopped being able to make sounds.
And then I panicked. It’s the only way to describe what happened to me.
I couldn’t find either of our phones, so I started running toward the highway. The further I got, the more confused I grew. I couldn’t imagine that what happened was real, or that what was happening was real. I was running down a highway with one shoe. I could see myself, like I was ahead of me, running toward me, like I was in a nightmare, not making any progress.
It wasn’t the memories of the wreck that took time to come back to me. It was that moment. The part of the night that was drowned out by the adrenaline rush and hysteria that bowled through me. I started making noises I didn’t know I could make.
I couldn’t breathe because you were dead, and how was I supposed to breathe when you had no air? It was the worst realization I ever had, and I fell to my knees and screamed into the darkness.
I don’t know how long I was on the side of the road. Cars were passing me, and I still had your blood on my hands, and I was scared and angry and couldn’t stop seeing your mother’s face. I had killed you and everyone was going to miss you, and you wouldn’t be around to make anyone feel appreciated or important anymore, and it was my fault, and I just wanted to die.
I didn’t care about anything else.
I just wanted to die.
I walked out into the street at what I’m guessing was around eleven at night, and a car had to swerve to miss me. I tried three times, with three different cars, but none of them hit me, and all of them were angry that I was in the road at dark. I got honked at and cussed at, but no one put me out of my misery, and no one helped me. I had already walked over a mile, and I didn’t know how far away I was from my apartment, but I knew if I could just get there, I could step off my fourth-floor apartment balcony, because that was the only thing I could think to do in that moment. I wanted to be with you, but in my mind, you were no longer trapped under your car in that wreck. You were somewhere else, floating around in the dark, and I was determined to join you because what was the point? You were my whole point.
I began to shrink with every second that passed, until I felt invisible.
And that’s the last thing I remember. There’s a long stretch of nothing between me leaving you and me even realizing I left you.
Hours.
Your family was told I walked home and fell asleep, but that’s not exactly what happened. I’m almost positive I fainted from shock, because when the cops beat on my bedroom door the next morning and I opened my eyes, I was on the floor. I noticed a small puddle of blood on the floor next to my head. I must have hit my head going down, but I didn’t have time to inspect it because police were in my bedroom and one of them had his hand on my arm and he was lifting me to my feet.
That’s the last time I ever saw my bedroom.
I remember my roommate Clarissa looked horrified. It wasn’t because she was horrified for me. She was horrified for herself. It was as if she had been living with a murderer all this time and had no idea. Her boyfriend, we could never remember his name—Jason or Jackson or Justin—was comforting her like I had ruined her day.
I almost apologized to her, but I couldn’t get my thoughts to connect with my voice. I had questions, I was confused, I was weak, I was hurting. But the most powerful of all the feelings flooding me in that moment was my loneliness.
Little did I know, that feeling would become perpetual. Permanent. I knew when they put me in the back seat of the police car that my life had reached its peak with you, and nothing that came after you would ever matter.
There was before you and there was during you. For some reason, I never thought there would be an after you.
But there was, and I was in it.
I’ll be in it forever.
There’s still more to read, but my throat is dry and my nerves are shot and I’m scared of what Ledger is thinking of me right now. He’s gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles have turned white.
I reach for my bottle of water and take a long drink. Ledger directs his car all the way up his driveway, and when we reach his house, he puts his truck in park and leans his elbow against his door. He doesn’t look at me. “Keep reading.”
My hands are shaking now. I don’t know if I can continue to read without crying, but I don’t think he’d care even if I read through my tears. I take another drink and then start reading the next chapter.
Dear Scotty,
This is what it was like in the interrogation room.
Them: How much did you have to drink?
Me: Silence
Them: Who took you home after the wreck?
Me: Silence
Them: Are you on any other illegal substances?
Me: Silence
Them: Did you call for help?
Me: Silence
Them: Did you know he was still alive when you fled the scene?
Me: Silence
Them: Did you know he was still alive when we found him an hour and a half ago?
Me: Screams.
Lots of screams.
Screams until they put me back in a cell and said they’d come back for me when I calmed down.
When I calmed down.
I didn’t calm down, Scotty.
I
think
I
lost
a
little
bit
of
my
mind
that
day.
They pulled me into the interrogation room two more times over the next twenty-four hours. I hadn’t slept, I was heartbroken, I couldn’t eat or drink anything.
I just. Wanted. To die.
And then, when they told me you would still be alive if I had just called for help, I did die. It was a Monday, I think. Two days after our wreck. I sometimes want to buy myself a headstone and have that date written on it, even though I’m still pretending not to be dead. My epitaph would read: Kenna Nicole Rowan, died two days after the passing of her beloved Scotty.
I never even attempted to call my mother through all of it. I was too depressed to call anyone at all. And how could I call my friends back home and tell them what I’d done?
I was ashamed and sad, and as a result of that, no one in my life before I met you knew what I had done. And since you were gone, and your entire family hated me, I had no visitors.
They appointed me a lawyer, but I had no one to post bail. I didn’t even have anywhere to go if I could have posted bail. I found comfort being there in that jail cell, so I didn’t mind it. If I couldn’t be with you in your car, the only place I wanted to be was alone in that cell where I could refuse to eat the food they gave me and hopefully, eventually, my heart would stop beating like I thought yours had that night.
Turns out, your heart was still beating. It was just your arm that had died. I could go into more gruesome details about how it was so horribly crushed and mangled during the wreck that the blood flow was completely cut off and that’s why I touched you and thought you were dead, and how, despite all that, you still somehow woke up and got out of the car and tried to get the help I never brought back to you.
I would have realized that if only I would have stayed with you longer, or tried harder. If I wouldn’t have panicked and ran and allowed the adrenaline to pump through me to the point that I wasn’t even functioning within the borders of reality.
If I could have been as calm as you always were, you’d still be alive. We’d probably be raising the daughter together that you never even knew we made. We’d probably have two kids by now, or even three, and I’d more than likely be a teacher, or a nurse, or a writer, or whatever you would have undoubtedly given me the strength to realize I could be.
My God, I miss you.
I miss you so much, even if it never showed in my eyes in a way anyone would have been satisfied with. I sometimes wonder if my mental state played a hand in my sentencing. I was empty inside, and I’m sure that emptiness showed in my eyes any time I had to face someone.
I didn’t even care about the first court hearing two weeks after you died. The lawyer told me we would fight it—that all I had to do was plead not guilty and he would prove that I wasn’t of sound mind that night and that my actions weren’t intentional and that I was very, very, very, very, very, very remorseful.
But I didn’t care what the lawyer suggested. I wanted to go to prison. I didn’t want to go back out in the world where I would have to look at cars again, or gravel roads, or hear Coldplay on the radio, or think about all the things I’d have to do without you.
Looking back on it now, I realize I was in a deep and dangerous state of depression, but I don’t think anyone noticed, or maybe there was just no one who cared. Everyone was #TeamScotty, like we were never even on the same team. Everyone wanted justice, and sadly, justice and empathy couldn’t both fit inside that courtroom.
But what’s funny is I was on their side. I wanted justice for them. I empathized with them. With your mother, with your father, with all the people in your life who were packed inside that courtroom.
I pleaded guilty, to my lawyer’s dismay. I had to. When they started talking about what you went through after I ran away from you that night, I knew I would rather die than sit through a trial and listen to the details. It was all too gruesome, like I was living some horror story, and not my own life.
I’m sorry, Scotty.
I tuned it all out somehow by just repeating that phrase over and over in my head. I’m sorry, Scotty. I’m sorry, Scotty. I’m sorry, Scotty.
They scheduled another court date for sentencing, and it was sometime between those two court dates that I realized I hadn’t had my period in a while. I thought my cycle was messed up, so I didn’t mention it to anyone. Had I known I was growing a part of you inside me sooner, I’m positive I would have found the will to go to trial and fight for myself. Fight for our daughter.
When the sentencing date came, I tried not to listen as your mother read her victim impact statement, but every word she spoke is still engraved in my bones.
I kept thinking about what you told me as you were carrying me up the stairs on your back that night in her house—about how they wanted more kids, but you were their miracle baby.
That’s all I could think of in that moment. I had killed their miracle baby, and now they had no one, and it was all my fault.
I had planned to give an allocution statement, but I was too weak and too broken, so when it came time for me to stand up and speak, I couldn’t. Physically, emotionally, mentally. I was stuck in that chair, but I tried to stand. My lawyer grabbed my arm to make sure I didn’t collapse, and then I think he might have read something out loud for me, I don’t know. I’m still not clear on what happened in the courtroom that day, because that day was so much like that night. A nightmare that I was somehow watching play out from a distance.
I had tunnel vision. I knew there were people around me, and I knew the judge was speaking, but my brain was so exhausted, I couldn’t process what anyone was saying. Even when the judge read my sentence, I had no reaction, because I couldn’t absorb it. It wasn’t until later, after I was given an IV for dehydration, that I found out I had been sentenced to seven years in prison, with the eligibility for parole even sooner than that.
“Seven years,” I remember thinking. “That’s bullshit. That isn’t nearly long enough.”
I try not to think about what it must have been like for you in that car after I left you there. What must you have thought of me? Did you think I had been thrown from the car? Were you looking for me? Or did you know I had left you there all alone?
It’s the time you spent alone that night that I know haunts us all, because we’ll never know what you went through. What you were thinking. Who you were calling out to. What your final minutes were like.
I can’t imagine a more painful way for your mother and father to be forced to live out the rest of their lives.
Sometimes I wonder if that’s why Diem is here. Maybe Diem was your way of making sure your parents would be okay.
But in that same vein, not having Diem in my life would mean it’s your way of punishing me. It’s okay. I deserve it.
I plan to fight it, but I know I deserve it.
Every morning, I wake up and I silently apologize. To you, to your parents, to Diem. Throughout the day, I silently thank your parents for raising our daughter since we can’t. And every night, I apologize again before I fall asleep.
I’m sorry. Thank you. I’m sorry.
That’s my day, every day, on repeat.
I’m sorry. Thank you. I’m sorry.
My sentence was not justice considering the way you died. Eternity wouldn’t be justice. But I hope your family knows my actions that night didn’t come from a place of selfishness. It was horror and shock and agony and confusion and terror that guided me away from you that night. It was never selfishness.
I am not a bad person, and I know you know that, wherever you are. And I know you forgive me. It’s just who you are. I only hope one day our daughter will forgive me too. And your parents.
Then maybe, by some miracle, I can start to forgive myself.
Until then, I love you. I miss you.
I’m sorry.
Thank you.
I’m sorry.
Thank you.
I’m sorry.
Repeat.
