PROLOUGE
Twenty-nine year old Jesse Aarons drove his old pick-up along the wet Virginia street. His wife, or soon-to-be ex-wife, Claire Taylor Aarons, sat silently in the front seat. They were on their way to see a lawyer about a divorce.
It was Claire that wanted the divorce. Jesse did too, he supposed. It was an irrational decision that they had made when they were nineteen. For a while, things had been great for Claire and Jess. But then, about seven years after their marriage, she gave birth to a daughter. A blonde little girl with blue green eyes full of love and curiosity. It was the blue green eyes that sent Jesse over the edge.
"What do you want to name her darling?" Claire had asked in the hospital.
"Leslie." He said automatically. "Leslie Sophia Aarons." Claire scowled. Leslie Sophia Burke had been Jesse's childhood playmate, who had drowned when they were eleven. He had never fully gotten over it, and the new mother worried that her husband would try to change their daughter into the little girl he lost. He didn't have to.
Leslie Aarons was like her namesake in everyway. Claire would watch him gaze at her adoringly. Not like a father looks at his daughter, but how a man looks at a woman he loves. He was placing his affection for Leslie Burke in his daughter. Though it killed her to do so, Claire finally placed Leslie up for adoption.
Jess went mad. It was like losing her again. At night, he screamed for Leslie Burke, yelling, fighting, telling her he loved her. Claire's heart was breaking. The last straw was pulled a few evenings back. After he kissed his wife, he called her Leslie. And so, here they were, on their way to see a lawyer about a divorce.
They were almost to the court when it happened. A drunken semi-truck driver ran a yellow light at eighty miles and hour. He crashed into the Aarons' truck. There was a flash of blinding light, and Jesse watched in horror as his wife's head banged against the windshield, her neck going limp. It was only ten seconds later until a shard of glass pierced his throat. He gasped in pain, and one last thought echoed through his mind:
This is how Leslie must have felt.
Then, his world went black.