My Mother Recognized My Fake Fiance From an Autumn Night Five Years Ago
Below those lay a folded white sheet of paper with the county sheriff’s department letterhead. The paper was yellowed at the edges, the ink faded to a dark gray.
I unfolded the document and began to read the typed lines near the top.
The report was dated October twenty-fourth, five years ago, at eleven fifteen in the evening.
According to the deputy’s typed narrative, the silver sedan owned by David and Olivia had collided with a stationary station wagon registered to Christopher.
The words sat plain on the paper, typed on an old manual machine that left the letter E slightly higher than the rest of the line.
The report stated that the station wagon was parked under a municipal street lamp, completely off the active roadway, with its hazard lights operating.
I looked down to the section marked driver condition.
The box next to the name Olivia was marked with a handwritten check, and the words suspected impairment were typed in the margin with a pen line drawn through them.
At the bottom of the page, a signature was written in thick black ink that had bled slightly into the cheap paper.
