"Around The Bend, Along A Country Road"
an excerpt

The two main characters, Polly, a single mom and artist living on a farm, and John, a New York City writer who has come to live on the neighboring farm he just inherited, talk about a pivotal event in John's life:

John and Dan had been closer than brothers. Two poor little rich boys. As if she could read his mind she said, “Dan. He’s the one you traveled to Europe with, right? He was your roommate – another writer, wasn’t he?”
“Yes,” John replied. His clothes suddenly felt too tight, his jacket too warm. He heard a little ringing in his ears beginning. Dan. How I let you down.
“And is he still writing? Or is he doing something else?”
I could tell her he’s doing something else. That he is no longer a writer. That he’s still in Connecticut and also in Switzerland … and in New York by the statue of Alma Mater on the Columbia campus. I could tell her all those things and they wouldn’t be lies.
“Dan is dead,” he said simply.
Polly looked at him sharply. Without thinking she replied, “Oh my God, that’s awful.”
John was quiet a moment, looking ahead.
“What happened?” she asked. “If … if you don’t want to talk about it, forgive me for asking.”
“No,” John said. He looked at Polly directly. Those blue eyes of hers – so pure. So tranquil And right now – so worried. Full of what he wanted to believe was caring. He took a chance.
“No, actually, I should tell you about it. I want to tell you. I don’t talk about it much. But I want to tell you.”
She was silent, waiting, and put a hand on his arm. “Not unless you really want to.”
He took a deep breath. “Dan really was the best friend I ever had. We met in a freshman literature class and then had a sophomore seminar together and got along so well we decided to room together junior year. Senior year, got a bunch of guys together and rented an apartment up near campus. We were all kind of … rich kids. But Dan. Dan was beyond rich. My dad had an apartment in New York, the place I live now, but he bought it a thousand years ago. Dan’s family had a Fifth Avenue apartment. And a house in Hawaii. And a standing reservation over Christmas every year in Switzerland, where they all went skiing together. It was … amazing. His dad was some kind of investment banker, and his mom was an architect.” Polly nodded, as if she understood the world he was talking about. She did, a little, but only because she had seen those lives from the outside. “She specialized in ‘public spaces,’ or something like that. Anyway.”
He took a deep breath, remembering that cold night. The flashing lights. The groggy feeling he had. Staggering around the accident scene and wondering if anyone would come and help them. Help Dan. Help Dan, he remembered screaming when the police and the ambulance finally arrived.
They had gone to visit his grandmother at her estate in Connecticut. It was February, and she wanted to throw a little “do” for Dan’s father at the country home. It had been a lovely Sunday afternoon, sparkling, crisp, snowy in the morning. The sun beat down and melted some of the snow making it a little messy by afternoon, then after the sun went down, ((a tremendous deep freeze)) the cold swept down from the north and froze everything up. The roads had become slippery, but no one really recognized it; the day had been so lovely.
“We hadn’t been drinking at all,” he said. “Dan was driving, and he was really cautious about stuff like that. A cousin of his had died in a drunken driving accident, so he wouldn’t touch a drop of alcohol if he had to get behind the wheel of a car.”
Polly nodded. Was there any such thing any more? A guy who really wouldn’t take such ridiculous chances?
“Connecticut has some really twisty roads out in the country side. It wasn’t anybody’s fault, either. He hit a patch of ice. Just like that. Out of no where. We skidded like crazy. There was a pick- up truck, a big one, behind us. We slid sideways then spun around and the truck slammed into the driver’s side and pushed the car into a couple trees along the road. Total wreck.”
Polly put her hand over her mouth, her eyes squinted in thought at the horrific accident.
“No side air bags back then,” John observed. “The truck driver was some young guy, terrified, freaking out. He didn’t have a cell phone and I didn’t know where mine was or even if Dan had one. I sat in the car for what seemed like a long time, in shock, but really it couldn’t have been more than a minute. Dan – I could pretty much see that he was gone, but I didn’t believe it and I wouldn’t accept it. I told myself it was just a lot of blood, but not really serious. The other driver came around to my side of the car first – less crunched – and looked at me and I couldn’t understand what the deal was. He looked horrified. Then I touched my face and felt blood pouring down it. It was a cut on my head where I had a terrible gash. If you think this scar is something –” he reached up to touch the car over his eyebrow – “you should see this one. You can’t really see it now. But I had a cut that went from the top of my head down and around and ending around here,” he said, tracing what must have been the line of the scar. “I must have looked hideous. I think the guy fainted then.” And so did I, he remembered. That was how it felt.
“Then we were all taken to the hospital … it was crazy. Surreal. They wouldn’t tell me Dan was dead. Not for a few days. ((He didn’t want to scare away potential donors to a new wing of the campus ecenter, for exaplme.)) I was pretty sure he was dead because of what they didn’t tell me.”
“Oh my God. So you were … ok?”
“A lot of cuts and scrapes and bruises. My whole body looked messed up. And I had a broken wrist. Not my writing hand, though.”
“It must have been so hard on you to lose your friend,” she said, touching his wrist, the left one, that had been broken. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
He shrugged. There wasn’t much to say. It had been horrible, and he hadn’t been able to even go to the funeral. His father had come out to see him, and for the first time, he had seemed like a real father.