AVA’s POV
The official report called it an accident.
Weather conditions. Visibility impaired by the storm. A tragic and isolated incident on a known high-risk stretch of the coastal bridge.
I read that report four times in the first week. Then ten more times across the following month. Each time, it sat incorrectly with me, like a sentence in a book where one word has been altered and the meaning changed just enough to feel wrong without being immediately obvious.
Nobody else seemed to notice. Or perhaps they noticed and decided not to look too closely.
The city grieved briefly, the way cities grieved people they had never actually known. Serena Vale’s name faded from headlines within a fortnight and life continued its indifferent forward motion.
But I couldn’t move forward. I kept r
