The deputy’s name was Tyler Voss, and he was twenty-five. Sheriff Brandt told him one more thing on that shoulder. On a February night in 2001, Tyler’s mother went into labor in a stalled car during a blizzard. The voice that talked her through delivering him on the side of Highway 9 belonged to the woman he had just left standing in the sun. Tyler sat down on his bumper and covered his face.

He was put on desk duty and sent through retraining that fall. A week later, he knocked on Mom’s door with his hat in his hands and apologized properly. She made him sit down and eat a lemon bar. He still stops by every August. I apologized too, for every time I had said she just answered phones. Now, when people ask what my mother did, I tell them she kept this whole county alive at night.