“I thought she was injured! I was heading to the hospital.”
“Liar!” screamed the girl, who’d clearly had enough. “You all planned this—I mean, you’re driving a getaway car!” She glared at me again through the rearview.
“See?” Nolan said. “Nobody’s going to give a shit what we say.” His voice lowered, sounding grave. “Get this through your head, Will: Jeffrey robbed that fucking store, and she’s right. You’re driving the getaway car. It happened. It’s happening. The minute we let her go, she’s running to the police.” He looked over at her. “And don’t even pretend you aren’t.”
“Damn right I am.”
Nolan shook his head. “Will, buddy, I know you don’t know what to do, so I’m telling you. Drive someplace safe where we can think for a few minutes and figure this out. You need to trust me. That’s what you need to do right now.”
I wanted to argue with him, but there was no time to think. That was the maddening part. I looked at the clock: 7:22—now seven minutes had passed. Everything was happening too fast. Buildings and streetlamps were flying past us, and every second that I didn’t make a decision, a decision was being made for us, because we were getting farther and farther away from the Milk-n-Bread with no easy way back. The traffic in the fucking westbound lane was at a standstill. I’d been caught in Friday rush before. If I turned the car around right now, it would be forty minutes, easy, before we were back at the store. And with the rain? More like an hour.
I couldn’t bear the thought of her being in my car that long, and I was searching desperately for something to say or do when Nolan added, “Mark my word. If you stop this car, you’re going to miss out on a lot of your kid growing up.”
His words made my gut squeeze and my eyes lose focus. The streetlights along the road dimmed for a moment, and I was afraid I might pass out. I’d always believed in Nolan, trusted his instincts. For as long as I’d known him, he was the guy who wanted—and deserved—the ball with ten seconds left. I gripped the wheel tighter and my vision returned. The car was still slowing down—my foot had been off the gas for the last quarter mile—but it didn’t seem to matter. Nolan was already on to other things.
“This’ll work out just fine for you,” he was saying to the girl now, his voice less dire. “So don’t sweat it for a second. We’ll have you home in no time. You have my word. This’ll be just fine.”
It turned out that those words, directed toward the backseat, were what I most needed to hear. Jeffrey had lost his head, but now we’d set things right. Nobody was injured—thank God for that—and nobody had meant anyone any harm; therefore, I told myself, everything could be fixed. All we needed, as Nolan said, was a little time to work out a solution.
Trust Nolan, I kept telling myself—a simple, comforting mantra. Nolan will know what to do. I gently placed my foot back on the gas. We passed the army/navy store and the Lincoln Diner.
“He’s right,” I said to her, forcing myself to sound calm and reassuring. “Don’t you worry about a thing.”
“You’re the one who should worry,” she said.
She was a young, frightened girl trying to sound tough, but I didn’t doubt her willingness to make our lives immeasurably harder. She’d never allow us to walk away from this. Not unless we convinced her.
“We should go to your house,” Jeffrey said to me. “The house is empty, right? So that’s where we need to go.”
“With all that traffic?” Nolan said. “We’d never get there.”
“So we drive around awhile first until the traffic lightens.”
“No,” I said. “I know where I’m going.” Home was out of the question. And to get to the hospital, I’d have had to turn off this road a mile back. Then I realized that for the last minute or so, I’d already been heading away from the hospital and toward the safest place I knew.
3
THE DAY CYNTHIA AND I moved into our house in Newfield was one of muted celebration. The stillness of our house unnerved me. I slept fitfully that night and awoke in the morning with heavy limbs and a need to stay in bed all day. And the next day. And the next. I passed the hours not reading, not watching television, sleeping the occasional hour in the afternoon and then lying awake all night.