**Chap­ter Nine: Ruthie (Sum­ma­ry)**

Get­ting bet­ter after the acci­dent was a con­stant strug­gle for Joe, besieged by pain that lin­gered from morn­ing until night. The haunt­ing mem­o­ries of the acci­dent plagued his dreams, trans­form­ing them into night­mares of sirens and hos­pi­tal machin­ery. Despite med­ica­tion and alco­hol from Aunt Lindy, Joe believed the pain and anger would con­sume him indef­i­nite­ly. Fam­i­ly mem­bers tried var­i­ous meth­ods to alle­vi­ate his sor­row, but none suc­ceed­ed; instead, he became res­olute in let­ting his pain dic­tate his life.

While con­va­lesc­ing in a tiny room in a Hal­i­fax rehab cen­ter, Joe fix­at­ed on blam­ing Mr. Richard­son, the dri­ver he col­lid­ed with. His moth­er plead­ed for under­stand­ing, ques­tion­ing how the man could be aware of a shad­ow step­ping into the road on a Sun­day night. Joe remained resent­ful, let­ting his anger fes­ter, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing drea­ry days when the weath­er matched his mood. Though months passed, he remained trapped in bit­ter­ness over his predica­ment.

Six months in rehab includ­ed missed fam­i­ly tra­di­tions, push­ing Joe fur­ther into despair. As spring approached, he attempt­ed to nav­i­gate his new real­i­ty using a cane and resort­ed to sneak­ing drinks to man­age his pain. Mae con­front­ed him about his self-indul­gent mope, urg­ing him to exer­cise. She warned that his behav­ior was hurt­ing their moth­er and cracked open his self-pity, insist­ing he need­ed to learn to be account­able for his actions—including that for Ruthie’s death.

Joe lashed out at Mae, but her words struck deep, con­fronting him with the truth about his mis­placed guilt. The ten­sion cul­mi­nat­ed in a pri­vate apol­o­gy weeks lat­er when Mae helped him to bed after a rough night. This piv­otal moment shift­ed his per­spec­tive, prompt­ing him to seek pur­pose and engage more active­ly with his fam­i­ly and respon­si­bil­i­ties.

As Joe went back to work, mem­o­ries of the garage invig­o­rat­ed him. He began to form a bond with Cora, a wait­ress from the local restau­rant. Their rela­tion­ship bloomed amidst Joe’s per­son­al tur­moil, includ­ing esca­lat­ing drink­ing habits. Cora’s kind­ness con­trast­ed with Joe’s mount­ing guilt and anger, which even­tu­al­ly spi­raled out of con­trol. A drunk­en night cul­mi­nat­ed in an unfor­giv­able act of vio­lence against her, lead­ing to a real­iza­tion of his destruc­tive nature. In despair, he fled, leav­ing every­thing behind, mark­ing his descent into chaos and regret.