Wendy was clipping along the Pacific Coast Highway, argu-ing with her mother over the Bluetooth about when she would have time to come to Detroit and see her father before he died, which was laying it on pretty thick, considering what he had was bursitis, when she noticed that the car in front of her had no driver.
“What the hell?” she said.
“What?” said her mother, her voice echoing inside the car. “What is it?”
She’d been following this car for nearly five miles now, heading back to her home in Santa Cruz after a business meeting in Pismo Beach. She didn’t normally take the Pacific Coast Highway, as she was doing tonight. She’d seen the view a hundred times— ho hum, there’s the ocean, big whoop— and the freeway was faster. And even if she’d wanted to take the extra time with the scenic route, there wasn’t any way to appreciate it when it was coming up on midnight.
But there had been a truck rollover in the northbound lanes of the freeway— Wendy got an advance warning on her Google traffic app— and so she had exited before the flow of cars turned into a standstill, and headed for the coastal road.
She had texted her mother before she left Pismo Beach, figuring she had gone to sleep and wouldn’t see it until the morning. But she must have woken up in the middle of the night, seen the text, and decided to call…
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