Not the kind of silence people romanticized in movies. Not peaceful. Not healing. This was the silence that came after a scream, after twisting steel, after a world that had once moved fast suddenly stopped moving at all.
He woke in St. Mary’s Regional Hospital in Billings, Montana, to a white ceiling and a dry mouth so raw it felt like sandpaper. There was a machine beeping beside him, a curtain drawn halfway around his bed, and the heavy chemical smell of antiseptic thick in the air. He tried to shift and was hit by pain so sharp and deep it turned his thoughts to static.
Then he heard his sister’s voice.
“Caleb?”
He turned his head.
Abby stood beside the bed holding a foam cup of coffee in both hands like she’d forgotten what to do with it. She was thirty-two, older than him by six years, broad-shouldered like their dad had been, with tired hazel eyes and a braid falling over one shoulder. She looked like she hadn’t slept in a week.
“What happened?” Caleb croaked.
