Gentleman’s Agreement

The sun was relentless, baking the cliffside in punishing heat, yet John Hillerman felt cold. Blood seeped from his broken leg, soaking into the dirt beneath him. He stared at the jagged edge above, then down at the wreckage of his wheelchair far below. Splintered metal glinted in the sun, mocking him.

How had he been so stupid?

“You can’t even kill yourself right,” he imagined his mother saying, her voice sharp as ever. Even dead, she had a way of needling him. She hadn’t let up for six years—not since that fall day he’d driven his drunk father to his death in a collision with another teenager. Just 14, John didn’t have a license but it was only a few miles and he knew better than to let his dad drive drunk. It didn’t occur to either of them to just wait.

That was it. One mistake, and neither his legs nor his mother had ever forgiven him. He still remembered her saying “It’s all your fault” two years ago when she raised a pistol to her own temple and pulled the trigger.