Small Acts
The Second Grave

It Should've Been Me

August 25, 2026 · Part 5 of 10 · 2 min

I didn't plan to say it. I'd told myself all week I'd let it lie, let an old man keep his secrets and his lilies and his Tuesdays. But he climbed into the cab that next week, shook the rain off his hat, and the words were out of me before I'd decided to speak them.

"Route 9. Nineteen ninety-seven. A woman got killed right around mile fourteen — hit-and-run, driver never found." I kept my eyes on the road. "You'd have been, what, driving out this way plenty back then."

The silence that followed had weight to it, like the cab had suddenly filled with water.

"Why are you asking me that," he said finally. Flat. Careful.

"Just seems like something a man who lives around here would remember."

"I remember it." His hands, folded in his lap, had gone white at the knuckles. "I remember it every single day of my life, if you want the truth of it."

"You knew her? Adeline Solis?"

His head snapped toward me so fast I nearly swerved. "How do you—"

"She was my mother."

I watched something break behind his eyes. Not surprise — he already knew, had known since the moment I said my name at mile fourteen a month ago. What I saw was worse than surprise. It was relief, twisted up with something like terror, the look of a man who'd been waiting nineteen years for a blow to finally land.

"Wendell. What do you know about that truck?"

He was already fumbling at the door handle, we were still a half mile shy of the gate, rain sheeting sideways across the windshield.

"Let me out."

"Not till you answer me."

"Let me OUT, Garrett—"

I braked hard enough that the rig behind us leaned on its horn. He had the door open before we'd fully stopped, one boot already down in the running water at the shoulder.

"It should've been me driving that night," he said, not looking at me, voice cracking clean in half. "Not him. God help me, it should've been me."

Then he was gone, into the rain, and I sat there with the door hanging open and the alarm chiming and no idea in the world who "him" was supposed to be.

Continue the story Part 6: The Ambulance →

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