She turned onto the dirt road that led back to Stillwater. As she approached the pavement that would take her back to Route 30, which would take her home, a lightness bloomed from within. She’d done it. Not perfectly, but as her mother said, Nothing in life goes perfectly. That’s why it’s life and not heaven.
Crawling back up the dirt road, past the fields of summer grass, she kept the headlights off and drove by the light of the moon. She saw movement ahead as a critter, a small blob of dark on dark, jetted across the road on its way to survive somewhere. She imagined the stress of that creature. Constantly in danger of a savage death by beak, talon, or jaw, its enemies were everywhere. Being ripped apart and devoured was nothing but a constant background terror. A possibility every single day of its short existence. Its life would likely end, and it would be nothing more than a carcass to be picked over by lesser predators.
She brought the car to the gate, which she’d closed after going through—just in case anyone drove by at this late hour and wondered why it was open. She knew from experience that if you drove the same country road enough you got to know it intimately: the curves of the asphalt, the seasonal decorations of the houses, the trees with branches that groped too far into your path, the fences, the signposts, all markers of distance from home. All it would take was one late-night driver to recall that this gate, normally closed, had been open.
She flicked on her lights, left the car running, hopped out, and pushed the gate wide.
This was about disappearing. People, she’d come to understand, disappeared all the time. The world simply opened its jaws and swallowed them whole. They vanished, and unless they were rich or famous or particularly beautiful, they did so almost without comment. There was bitterness at murder, grief at accidents, and fury at suicide. But to disappear—well, there was only mystery. And mystery was all three of those things bundled together and made more frightening by the impossibility of it. There were Facebook and iPhones now. People weren’t supposed to disappear anymore, and that made it all the more unnerving. At least to those who would wonder about a former football star, who went out for a drink, got a flat tire, and never made it home.
She climbed back into the Cobalt and drove to the other side of the fence. She parked it at the side of the road while she closed the gate. This time, mindless habit led her to shut off the engine, not giving it a second thought. She took the bolt, dangling from its chain, and fixed it back into the hasp. She glanced briefly at the sky, at a flash of very distant lightning. When she slid back into the car, her hand automatically turned the key. In the same moment that the starter did its little choked wheeze, she wondered why on earth she hadn’t just left the car idling.
Her stomach turned liquid. Sweat broke out as if once again she faced the heat of her fire pit. She tried it again. She tried it a third time. The engine had started just fine in the clearing. She’d thought of everything except for Cole’s failing car. She tried it a fifth time. A tenth. The wheeze was down to a rattle.
She couldn’t panic. If she panicked she might do something stupid. She was so close. She got out of the car, though she was not sure why. She popped the hood, but even after all this time with Cole, she knew nothing about cars other than how to drive one.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay. Please.”
The car probably just needed a jump. But she’d left her phone plugged in on her nightstand in Van Wert. She could walk to a nearby house, claim she was on her way back from a party and the engine had quit. But then there would be a record to follow. Witnesses. Proof she’d been in New Canaan tonight. She’d have to pay with a credit card, and Cole would see the charge.
So instead she just stood there, staring at the shadows of the engine, indecisive, panic swelling. She ripped hair from the spot on the back of her head and felt how wide the bald patch had grown.
She lost track of how long she stood there screaming inside her skull.
When the sound of a car and the glow of headlights both crept into the distance, she wanted to weep. Because this was both what she needed and what scared her the most. The car came from the east, from the direction of town, heading toward the country. The tears came out of her unbidden, but she moved to the road anyway, waited for the headlights to find her, and waved both arms above her head.
The car, an old boxy Jeep, slowed, hesitated, and then pulled to the side, nose to nose with the Cobalt. A figure emerged, a young woman, her face hidden by the glare of the headlights.
“Howdy,” said the woman.
She didn’t respond. Tina didn’t want the first word she spoke to be a sob. Now she was shaking.
“Hey,” the woman said, coming around the side. “Holy shit. Tina?”
Of course it was someone who knew her.
“Tina? Hey— What? Are you all right?”
It was the woman in the summer dress she’d seen outside the Lincoln. Tina knew her. The face was eminently familiar in the way a face can be when you can still not summon the person’s name. She’d been Tina’s best childhood friend. Such was her disbelief, her terror, that this simple, memorable name would not come to her. She ripped at the hairs with two fingers. She had to pee. She had to scream.
She thought of Cole to center her. Finally, she was able to push words out.
“Hey,” she said. “Hey. Wow. What are the odds.”
Such a stupid way to begin, and she practically wept each word. She wiped her eyes.
“Jesus, are you all right?” She came over and put a hand on Tina’s arm. Tina couldn’t look her in the eyes.
“Yeah, no, I’m fine. I’m sorry.” She waved a hand in the air spastically to clear it. “I just. My car died out here, and my phone’s—” Forgotten, your phone’s forgotten. “I forgot my phone. And I just. This is so far out, I was afraid I’d be out here all night.”
The woman stared down at her. The familiar pixie face, cute, eerily similar to both her brothers’. She’d cut her hair into an odd, ugly, spiky mess. Memories of sneaking downstairs to the family snack drawer in search of Fruit Roll-Ups. Her name was right there in every sense but the sounds of the letters.
“It’s okay, girl. We’ll get this fixed.”
“Yeah—no, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I was just— Before you came I was panicking. I don’t know anything about cars.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “Can I try it?”
She walked around and got in the driver’s seat, tried the key. Same result.
“Totally fine. It just needs a jump. I have cables in my car.”
She walked to her trunk, feet crunching over the grit of the road.
“You know how to jump a car?” Tina asked.
“Are you kidding? Do you even remember my dad? He practically made me take classes on jumper cables and changing tires before he’d let me get my license. Also, haven’t you ever seen SVU? There are pervs out there—you gotta know how to jump a car.”
She hefted her jumper cables.
“I’ve been running into everyone tonight! I thought you and your folks moved away.”
“We did.” Tina struggled for an explanation. “I was back in town running some errands.”
This sounded less than convincing, and it was impossible to tell how the woman took it. She popped the hood and came around, found the release, lifted.
“What are you up to now?” she asked.
“Not much. Nothing exciting. Live in Van Wert by the Indiana line. Work at Walmart.”
She wondered if the woman would remember the exact spot she’d helped Tina. If she’d remember it was by this gate and the road leading into the woods. Suddenly, she was sure the light of the fire must have been visible to the woman as she came up the road, but this was ridiculous. That was over an hour ago, and from Stillwater it would have been nothing but a dim ember in the deep. Now the woman was staring at her car, though. Studying it.