Mason

Maybe the cracked plastic near the steering wheel.

Nothing serious.

The sheriff's deputy arrived about 25 minutes later.

By then, my mom was there too.

She came in and hugged me so hard it hurt, and I didn't care.

I kept saying, "'It talked like you.'"

She kept saying, I know baby, which scared me because how would she know?

The deputy looked at my car first.

The front bumper was cracked.

The lower grill was broken.

There was a dent in the hood near the passenger side and long scratches across the roof.

Not little scratches from branches.

Four long marks almost parallel scraped through the paint.

The passenger side mirror was hanging by wires.

There was dirt and dark hair stuck in the cracks of the bumper, but no body.

No dead coyote in the road, no blood trail into the brush, nothing.

The deputy asked me what I hit.

I said, a coyote.

My uncle looked at me from behind the deputy and shook his head once, not like he was saying I was wrong, but like he didn't want me saying more.

The deputy asked if I had been drinking.