The afternoon was beautiful. After four straight days of rain, the skies had finally cleared. The sun shone, warm and pleasant, and the trees and grass shone a brilliant green, full of renewed life after the long storm.
I rolled the windows down as we drove, enjoying the beautiful weather and the wind as it played with the wisps of hair that escaped my ponytail. Jane sang along with the radio, badly mangling the words with her limited three-year-old vocabulary, and Thomas noozed peacefully in his car seat, tuckered out from a morning of hard play.
I took the entrance ramp for the freeway, my movements routine, having driving this route a hundred times in the year since I'd moved here. I waited for my turn to switch lanes. It was less than a mile of driving on the freeway, and yet one exit stood between me and the exit for my home.
Ahead of me, a small white pickup drifted to the shoulder. It was too early for the lane to split for the exit ramp, so I watched the truck, casually wondering why he was pulling over and if I should merge early to give him some extra space. With the lane to my left packed with a line of traffic, I turned my attention back to the pickup.
I became mildly concerned for him when a bit of smoke rose up from the back of his undercarriage, but it was the concern of a complete stranger feeling pity for someone she'd never meet, knowing how unpleasant car trouble can be.
And then his wheel fell off.
It was one of those incredibly-fast-slow-motion moments. The wheel just disappeared. It shot forward, continuing in the path it had been tracing. The truck slammed to the ground, sparking as the metal shaft dragged across the freeway cement at a rapid pace. The screeching of the metal sent shivers through me. The sparks turned into flames as the driver pulled the pickup completely out of the lane and onto the shoulder.
There was still no sign of the tire. I knew there should be shreds of rubber littered across my lane at any second, so I hit my brakes, prepared to avoid what I could, knowing that my little car could be seriously damaged if I ran over a chunk that was too big. The cars in front and behind me slowed as well. But there was no debris. And still the truck was skidding to a halt.
By the time the truck was stopped, I was passing him. I looked at the driver, my stranger-pity raised to a considerably higher level. Still I didn't know him, but for a moment there all our lives had been at risk together. If he hasn't been turning for the exit early, any number of us could have been hurt. Whether he could feel the truck giving him trouble or he had a premonition of danger or it was just luck, but I was grateful to him for pulling off.
He sat there, both hands gripping the steering wheel, staring straight ahead. He didn't move. And then he was behind me. The whole thing was over in about five seconds.
The cars in front of me didn't speed up as we passed the exit. The lane split off, and I stayed left. The exiting cars to my right slowed to a crawl, and I looked over to see why. There, rolling down the middle of the lane, peacefully leading the way up the exit ramp, was the lone wheel, completely intact. Even the hubcap was still connected.
As I took my own exit and headed for home I looked back at my children sitting behind me. Jane had found her princesses and was making them dance to the song on the radio. Thomas had turned his head but was otherwise undisturbed from his peaceful sleep.
The sun still shone down on me, the wind still played with my hair. Everything was the same as it had been. The only remaining evidence of the near-disaster was my quickened heart rate. Only I was changed.
