they could comprehend it at all

They couldn’t be happy any more if He hadn’t, his mother had said. They could never get well. Hannah wondered whether they could comprehend it at all and whether she should try to tell them. She doubted it. Deeply uncertain, she tried again. “He was driving home last night,” she said, “about nine, and apparently something was already wrong with the steering mech—with the wheel you guide the machine with. But your father didn’t know it. Because there wasn’t any way he could know until something went wrong and then it was too late. But one of the wheels struck a loose stone in the road and the wheel turned aside very suddenly, and when ...” She paused and went on more quietly and slowly: “You see, when your father tried to make the auto go where it should, stay on the road, he found he couldn’t, he didn’t have any control. Because something was wrong with the steering gear. So, instead of doing as he tried to make it, the auto twisted aside because of the loose stone and ran off the road into a deep ditch.” She paused again. “Do you understand?” They kept looking at her. “Your father was thrown from the auto,” she said. “Then the auto went on without him up the other side of the ditch. It went up an eight-foot embankment and then it fell down backward, turned over and landed just beside him. “They’re pretty sure he was dead even before he was thrown out. Because the only mark on his whole body,” and now they began to hear in her voice a troubling intensity and resentment, “was right—here!” She pressed the front of her forefinger to the point of her chin, and looked at them almost as if she were accusing them. They said nothing. I suppose I’ve got to finish, Hannah thought; I’ve gone this far.