Around a 25 mile an hour corner at 40 and the sun catches her eyes at just the wrong time and off they go over the edge, down towards the ocean, pale, brilliant blue around the rocks below and a darker, midnight blue farther out. Whitecaps; she notices the waves as they drop, the car falling out from underneath their bodies, leaving them apparently weightless.

Asleep in the passenger seat, the shift in gravity wakes him just barely before they hit the water. 3.5 seconds of freefall; they hit the water at 77 miles an hour. The airbag catches him across the nose, smashes his head back against the headrest, knocks him from bleary consciousness to blearly unconsciousness. His ears ring, from the impact, from her shout, from the dog’s wail as it hits the windshield.

Nervous, barely balanced on the console between the seats, legs trembling, leaning into the passenger shoulder, the driver shoulder, the dog is the only one who sees the curve coming, sees the cliff coming, sees the ocean coming. Forever scared of the new, he is scared of this, this long fall toward old enemy ocean, the hard stop, the shattered glass, the cold depths, the fading light, sinking, sinking, sinking.