Jon held her hand in his lap as he drove, his thumb smoothing rough circles across the back of her hand. The action wasn’t as soothing as it should have been. Instead, it seemed to hold all the tension and…something else that she’d been picking up from him the past couple of days.
After making love that first night, they’d rarely spent any time apart. When Jon was at work, Patti occupied herself with the car. She met Lynn for lunch once on Tuesday, and she’d made a half-assed attempt at searching for a job on Wednesday, but every time five o’clock rolled around, she was a frizzing bundle of lust just waiting for her man to come scoop her up into his arms and make love to her.
Her man.
It was funny that she felt this way now, when she’d never really felt this way before. She had a track record with the opposite sex—one that didn’t deviate far from the scumbag spectrum. Initially, she worried that Jon might not fall far from that particular tree, but taking a chance on him had been the best thing she had ever done. It had only been a few weeks since they first ran into each other—she smiled at the memory—but she could already tell that he was far, far different from any of her previous boyfriends.
Jon was thoughtful, strong, and attentive. He was loving and warm and when he looked at her, she felt as if he were really seeing her. When she’d gone to tell her father about him one afternoon while Jon was at the office, she confessed how she thought she might be in danger of falling in love with him.
Nothing profound happened when she revealed the news.
Lightning didn’t streak down from the sky to strike her dead.
Her father didn’t crawl out of the grave to scold her into taking it slower.
The sky remained as blue as Jon’s eyes and the birds continued to sing their cheerful tunes, so she took that as a sign that he approved of her choices.
Her mother, however, was not so receptive. She urged Patti to slow down, to think things through, and not to make any rash decisions. She also brought up her car, just as she always did when she caught sight of it sitting in her driveway.
Sometimes Patti wondered why she drove it there at all when she had a perfectly respectable car sitting at home, but then she knew the answer to that question the instant it crossed her mind: she did it just to piss her off.
“Patti, sweetheart,” her mother said in her most disapproving tone the second she stepped through the front door. “How can you still drive that thing?”
Tossing her purse on to one of the end tables, Patti flopped down in the chair that had always been reserved for her father, and sighed. “Because it’s my car,” she deadpanned eager to escape the subject.
She could still see her mother’s head shaking as she took her place across from her and folded her legs at the ankles. “You mean because it’s your father’s car.”
“No,” Patti returned, her eyes narrowing into tiny slits. “Because it’s mine. Dad has nothing to do with it.”
Her mother’s pale eyes rolled and her tone turned snide. “Of course he does. He has everything to do with everything, doesn’t he, Patti?”
Even now, miles away, Patti’s back grew rigid at the memory. It was just so uncharacteristic of her to behave that way. “What the hell is that supposed to mean, Momma?”
She watched as her mother shifted in discomfort and brushed her palms across her stick thin legs. Her gaze hit the floor. “Let’s not fight, sweetheart. Would you like me to make some tea?”
“I don’t what any damn tea.” Patti sat forward, pinning her to her seat with determined eyes. “I want to know what you mean by that.”
Her mother stood and crossed the room trying to escape, but Patti leapt to her feet and grabbed a hold of her arm, spinning her around, intent on getting her answer. “Tell me!”
Her mother stared at her like she’d sprouted another head, and then her expression shifted, growing cold and unyielding. “You’ve always loved him more,” she accused. “Ever since you were a baby, when you cried only he could soothe you. When you wanted someone to read you a bedtime story, only he could do it. Then when you got older, you wanted to be just like him. You started working on that damn car together, and I was all alone.” Her voice shook as her eyes began to well up.
“You’re father died in that car,” she cried. “He died in it and you hold on to it like it’s a shrine!”
Stunned, Patti had dropped her arm as if it had caught fire, and stumbled back.
Her mother wiped the tears that had spilled from under her eyes. When she spoke again, her voice was more controlled. “You act just like he did, you know? You both liked fast cars, both liked taking risks.” Crossing the room, she took a shuddering breath and lowered herself down on the couch cushions.
“Sometimes, when the house is quiet, I just sit here and think. I worry that one day someone will knock on that door, or the phone will ring, and someone will tell me that my daughter is dead, that she wrapped that blasted car around a tree or spun out of control and crashed into a drainage ditch, and it will be just like that day, happening all over again.”
Through her mother’s entire speech, Patti stood rooted to her spot, unable to move. After she got past the initial shock of her words, they both had a good cry, and her mother held her, squeezing her in an embrace so tight it threatened to crush her.
She’d never known she felt that way. She’d never realized their relationship was so strained. It was eye opening.
Of course, then she couldn’t stop thinking about how, just the evening before, when she and Jon had gone out to grab dinner, they had almost made her mother’s worst nightmare come true.
Sports cars weren’t all-weather vehicles, despite what some people seemed to think. Which was why she liked to keep the Toyota on hand—it got better traction. It had been overcast when they left, but they weren’t planning to be gone long, and Jon had started enjoying taking her baby out for a spin whenever they went anywhere. She couldn’t blame him. She understood the draw of a piece of powerful machinery, and she was thrilled that he had seemed to be getting past whatever hang-ups he had about the car initially.
By the time they’d picked up their meals and started to head for home, a slow drizzle had begun to wet the streets. Jon was a good driver. She approved of how he handled the car. Everything was going smoothly and they were only two blocks from home, when another car ran the red light.
Jon stomped on the brakes, and the car fishtailed through the intersection. Realizing his error, he let off on the brake and tried to steer into the spin, but it was already too late. She screamed and braced herself for impact as they drifted across all four lanes toward oncoming traffic.
She was certain they were going to die that day.
But they didn’t.
Somehow, the car slowed down enough for Jon to regain control and he twisted the wheel, narrowly avoiding the cars that were speeding toward them. After some careful maneuvering, he got them back on the road and home safely.
He hadn’t driven the car since.
The memory was unsettling even for her, but she suspected that it had shaken him up pretty bad. She recalled his odd behavior when she’d taken him on their date to the racetrack and how he didn’t want to take her car that day. She thought about the moment when they were about to make love for the first time and how he had drawn away, telling her there were things about him that she didn’t know. Things that would make her change her mind about him. That he had destroyed lives.
She wondered now, as she peered out the window at the fast approaching suburban neighborhood, if Jon’s aversion to cars, more specifically, sports cars—she never did find out what happened to that Dodge Charger—was something she should be concerned about.