Andy and Brooke took the first available flight to Richmond, having to layover in Charlotte, North Carolina, for an hour. Brooke rented a car at the airport and they drove to the Hanover County coroner's office, attached to the regional hospital in Mechanicsville.

The sheriff's deputy who called Andy met them at the coroner's office. He explained in more detail what he had summarized on the phone last night: Alecia and her coworkers were involved in a 3-vehicle collision on I-295 at about 10 pm local time. One of the other vehicles was a 22-foot moving truck. Alecia and the younger lawyer, Robert, were dead at the scene. The older lawyer, Tom, was in an induced coma. The deputy showed them black and white infrared photos taken last night on the highway. They showed the rental car on its roof in the highway median, the front end completely smashed in. Alecia and Robert had been sitting in the front seat.

Brooke was hysterical, hearing the devastating news for the first time from someone other than her dad. It hadn't seemed real when her 16-inch tall father woke her up in the middle of the night. Now, the child's fervent hope that it was all a mistake ended in one fell stroke, and she could hardly breathe through the sobs that shook her body. Andy desperately wanted to hold her against him, to reassure her, to be the rock upon which the floodwaters broke. It was unbearable to be unable to do that while his daughter struggled to cope.

When she was calm, the sheriff's deputy escorted her to the hospital cafeteria and brought Andy back to the coroner's office.

"Did anyone in the other cars die?" Andy asked.

"No."

He choked down his anger as he asked the question he'd been thinking about all day. "Whose fault was it?"

"It was no one's fault, Mr. Speed. Robert was exceeding the speed limit and wandered too far into the next lane, according to witnesses."

"Was he drinking?"

"Blood report says he was stone cold sober. It was an accident, Mr. Speed. They happen every day."

It was a major letdown, not having someone to blame, other than reckless driving. Even that was a stretch. Sheer bad luck more than anything else had ended two lives, potentially three. Bad luck had turned his family upside down. What was the difference between Alecia dying and Alecia living? Two seconds? One second? A moment lost in time like a drop in the ocean, until it came and then was gone before you could do anything about it.

Andy started to choke up. "Do I have to identify her?"

"No, but you can see her if you like. The coroner's cleaned her up."

The deputy carried him through a set of double doors, beyond which the air was cool and smelt sterile. They entered a gray room with four long metal tables, two of them occupied by bodies covered by long, green sheets.

At the far table he pulled the sheet back, revealing Alecia from the neck up, mercifully hiding her crushed chest. Andy looked at face. Her expression wasn't peaceful; anyone who says a dead person looks peaceful is lying. The dead's faces look blank.

He hardly recognized her without the light in her eyes or the warmth in her cheeks. This body, this flesh and blood he'd shared for 19 years, was empty. She was gone.

The deputy discharged the body to Andy, and he arranged to have her cremated at a funeral home in Mechanicsville.

On their way out of the hospital, Robert's wife came in from the sweltering afternoon heat, looking as terrible as Andy felt. She and Brooke exchanged a few words, condolences mostly. Andy was in a fog. He couldn't remember what was said.

At the funeral home, Brooke asked to see the body before they torched it. They let her have all the time she needed. She held Alecia's hand and stared at her face for over an hour. Andy joined her in the viewing room and rubbed her calf comfortingly.

"Are you okay, sweetie?"

"No, Daddy. I'm not okay."

"Me neither."

Brooke started to weep silently. Andy stood by her, unwilling to leave her by herself. His place as her father was right here, by her side.

"I didn't say goodbye," she said.

Andy looked up at her. "What?"

Brooke wiped her cheek, hid her face from him. "When she left to come here. I didn't say goodbye or 'I love you,' nothing."

Andy swallowed, recounting his last night with Alecia. Her hesitancy to initiate sex because of his size. His comparing her to the younger, nubile Kimberly. It was a humiliating punctuation mark to their otherwise rock-steady marriage. She deserved better.

"You can tell her now, Brooke," he said. "She can hear you. You can tell her you love her whenever you want."

She squeezed Alecia's hand. "I love you, Mom."

They were both too tired to travel that night, so they got a two-bed hotel room near the airport, intending to fly back in the morning. Brooke lay on her bed, eyes glued to the TV, but she was really daydreaming about Alecia, replaying memories in her mind.

Andy was wiped out from the day's events. He'd slept only a few hours the night before, and his shrinking body yearned for rest. But he couldn't sleep, not with so much to do. He had to plan Alecia's memorial service back home. He still had to contact Alecia's family. He dreaded that phone call to his mother-in-law, but it had to be done.

"Brooke," he said. She awoke from her daydream to look at him. "Why don't you walk down to the convenience store and get us some junk food?"

She rose wordlessly from the bed and grabbed Andy's credit card on the way out.

Andy jumped down to the floor and went to his wife's purse. He needed Alecia's cell phone to call her mother, as he didn't have her number saved in his phone. He reached down and rummaged through the purse's contents but couldn't find her phone in the mess of his wife's stuff. He pushed the purse over and dumped everything on the floor.

"There," he said, lifting the heavy phone from the middle of the pile. He heard a crunching underfoot and glanced down, just long enough to warrant a second look.

He was standing on a condom.

Four condoms, actually. Still wrapped.

It took Andy a minute to work through the implications. He and Alecia hadn't had sex since he contracted the shrinking disease. Roughly 6 weeks. She'd expressed less romantic interest the shorter he got. All of a sudden he saw their last night together from a different angle. No wonder the bitch wasn't in the mood. She was fucking some guy—probably one of the lawyers she'd come to Virginia with!

"No, Alecia," he groaned. "Please tell me you didn't…" He couldn't say the words that went with his thoughts.

He looked at her cell phone, which he still held in his arms. If she was cheating on him, the evidence would be on her phone.

He turned on the phone and navigated to her text messages. Her most recent message was addressed to Brooke, at 8:02 last night. "Just landed in Richmond. Love you!"

A tear rolled down his cheek. She wasn't dead for 24 hours, and already he was betraying her memory by snooping through her phone. But he HAD to know.

The second most recent text conversation was with Robert, the younger lawyer with the family.

Andy scrolled past several texts containing legalese. It read like ancient Greek to him. They'd last texted Saturday about the briefs on her laptop.

Then he came across some language that he could understand. "Is that all you've got counselor?" It was sent from Alecia to Robert last Thursday night at 11:20.

Andy eyed the previous text from Robert, at 11:17: "B===============>  =)"

He scrolled down frantically, reading their conversation in reverse.

Alecia, at 11:16: "What did it look like?"

Robert, at 11:13: "Your skirt made my dick so hard. I had to hide it under my desk all day"

Alecia, at 11:11: "What do you mean?"

Robert, at 11:05: "Why do you torture me so?? =("

All this was preceded by more legalese until Tuesday night.

Alecia, at 9:50: "Can't wait"

Robert, at 9:44: "I'd like to show you someday"

Alecia, at 9:41: "I wonder what it's like to be loved by a REAL man  =)"

Robert, at 9:37: "Shorty doesn't know what he's missing"

Alecia, at 9:35: "I had BIG plans for him afterwards, if you know what I mean ( .  )(  . )"

Robert, at 9:34: "That's a shame"

Alecia, at 9:30: "so I ate alone."

Alecia, at 9:29: "The little man was too tired to eat the food I made for him"

Robert, at 9:26: "That bad?"

Alecia, at 9:22: "It didn't"

Robert, at 9:18: "Just put the kids to bed. How'd it go? Tell me all the juicy details"

Last Tuesday. That was the night Andy escaped the house, the night of Kimberly's date with Paul. Alecia was trying to rekindle their romance, but he'd been too preoccupied with Kimberly's date to see it. She'd made his favorite meal, too. Andy's disinterest had driven her to make herself feel better by attracting the attentions of another man.

Andy felt sick. It was entirely possible Alecia hadn't cheated on him. There was no evidence in these texts that they had done the deed. She was probably thinking about it. Planning on it, maybe. Just as he had thought about sleeping with Kimberly, and had come awfully close—twice—to following through with it.

He dropped the cell phone and slumped to the floor, shaken by the sham his marriage had become in what he had no idea were its final weeks.

When he was all cried out, he pushed everything back into Alecia's purse, except the condoms, which he flushed down the toilet. Brooke would never know what he just learned.

She returned with bags of soda, assorted chips, and candy. They sat on Andy's bed and stuffed themselves. It was kind of fun, just the two of them, pigging out. They never would have done something like this with Alecia.

"Daddy, can I sleep with you tonight?"

She didn't want to be alone. Andy's fatherly instincts told him he couldn't say no, as his self-preservation instincts told him she could kill him just by rolling over on top of him.

But she'd thought of that already. "I'll hold you so you won't get hurt."

They dressed in their pajamas and Brooke turned off the light. She lay on her side on the bed and pulled Andy against her chest, enveloping him in her arms. Her firm, perky breasts—huge compared to him—spread against his back and spilled over his sides. Was she growing, or was it just a matter of him getting smaller? He was literally between his daughter's breasts, from his shoulders to his waist, and she was at most a C cup, as far as he knew. He covered his arousal with his hands so she wouldn't feel it.

But she already had. "It's okay, Daddy."

"Uh, what's okay?"

She patted his crotch with her pinky. "I know it's not me turning you on. It's just body parts, at your size. Like Kim in the dressing room. Mom told me to expect it. So it's okay."

Andy did NOT need to be reminded of how Kimberly looked in her bikini. The fleeting image spurred his arousal into a fully fledged hard-on.

She kissed the top of his head. "Good night, Daddy."

"Good night, sweetie."

She was snoring within minutes, but Andy was awake for most of the night, his mind ill at ease with what his life was becoming.