Watching a Glass Shatter

Chapter 1

Present, Memorial Day

While sitting in the backseat of his steel gray Mercedes-Benz sedan, Ben switched the mobile phone to his other ear and removed the seatbelt out of his way, loath to strap himself in for any length of time. When its band rested tightly across his chest, he struggled to breathe, preferring instead to trust in his long-time chauffeur's driving abilities more than a piece of nylon fabric hinged to a pulley. "I am in the car heading to the Club. I should arrive in twenty minutes."

"Still happily married to the woman of your dreams?" his wife said, exuding whimsy in her lyrical voice.

"Ah, my beautiful Olivia. The last forty years have been amazing... so much ahead of us and still to come."

"I love you more than yesterday."

"But not as much as tomorrow." He played along, enjoying their frivolous banter.

"Please get to the party soon. It's not any fun without my best friend by my side. I look a bit funny dancing a rumba by myself. Remember when we crashed into the instructor taking those silly dance lessons, and she yelled at us for being fools... oh, I never laughed so hard."

Ben glanced through the car window, surprised by the speed of the muddy water cascading down the mountains as his chauffeur took the Interstate exit through their hometown of Brandywine, Connecticut. "Ha, yes! Quite a pair. No wife of mine should ever dance alone. At least not while I am alive. Is tonight the first time the whole family has assembled together since last Christmas?"

"Yes. They're all here now, reminding me so much of you in the early days. The rain sounds torrential, dear."

Ben's thoughts drifted while the chauffeur drove him to the banquet hall, lightning crackling in the sky and rain pounding the black-tarred roads around him. "Yes, but time flies by too quickly."

"You've got a few months left, then you'll retire and have nothing but time to be a grandfather and a father, doling out advice – even if they don't want to listen to us, they never do, do they? Wishing you could turn back the clock. At least we can finally take our trip to Europe... still there, Ben?"

Ben snapped out of the storm's lulling, hypnotic trance when he heard Olivia shouting on the phone. "Sorry. Just distracted recalling their antics over the years. I do not know how we survived five boys."

Ben heard her beautiful snicker and was about to tell Olivia he loved her, but the car swerved as it neared the final exit on the slick asphalt curve, unaware traffic had come to a full stop ahead. He dropped the phone from the unplanned change in direction, retrieved it from under the front passenger seat and raised his head.

As he looked up, Ben's heartbeat and breathing paused significantly longer than usual, enough to recognize the encroaching overpass column directly in his purview and accept the impending fate laid before him. Whoever said your life flashes before your eyes in the final moments clearly knew what they talked about. And in Ben's case, although they only lasted ten explosive seconds, those moments managed to include all sixty-nine years of his life, each image punctuated by a blinding flash of pure white light and deafened by the harsh snapping sound of an old-time camera shutter.

CRUNCH. Grinding squeal. Bright light glimmers in a dark vacuum.

The enchanting depth of the pools in Olivia's cerulean blue eyes the night they first met at the opera. Their wedding day when he truly understood what it meant to find one's soulmate.

SNAP. Utter blackness, followed by a perforated vibrant glow.

The Thanksgiving feast spent at the hospital when his sister-in-law Diane broke her foot avoiding dropping the turkey on Bailey, their ten-year-old shiba inu. Seeing his granddaughters for the first time when his sons brought them home nestled in tiny pink blankets.