Her tires sang mournfully on wet pavement. He’d never noticed that before.

He was familiar with a lot of things about her. The way she always smelled of leather and gun oil, with echoes of blood and sweat and fast food and gasoline. The way her engine growled and the power of it made her whole frame tremble. The way the rolled upholstery of her seats creased his cheek when he slept.

He’d grown up with all those things, but in the grim silence of the present, stripped of music and voices, for the first time, he heard her grieve.

************************************

And we have less than a week to go!