Now more cars are slowing and stopping, their headlights illuminating the road. Another guy’s out and on his phone. An older woman who stopped has got her arm around the Cadillac guy, leading him toward the median. There’s no sign of Luca. I shift into reverse, my hand trembling, then ease onto the gas.
I roll off the median and go farther up the road where I can hang a U-turn. I drive slowly past Heath and the clot of stopped cars. Nobody even glances my way.
I ease up to sixty miles an hour. Still nothing happens. No police lights, nothing. I drive and drive and drive, slow and steady down the highway, keeping the truck at an even sixty. All the while, a constant, low humming vibrates through my brain.
I don’t know how long it takes—maybe thirty, forty-five minutes—before I realize it’s actually me, humming a tune. Sinatra, if you can believe it. Goddamn Sinatra.
And then I’m sobbing. Loud, inhuman wails and tears pour out of me, and I don’t try and stop them. I am due. Past due. I drive and cry. Drive and cry. For the little girl in an apartment alone. On top of a bunk bed at night, hungry. Sitting in a psychologist’s smoky office, terrified, telling a partial truth that will slither and encircle and squeeze the life out of her for years to come. I cry for the woman who, even for a split second, actually believed she could stay with a murderer. That she could love him.
But I am alive. I’m alive and driving away from him. I was not willing to dig up a grave and climb in with the monster inside.
I switch on the radio, and the tears stop. Strangely, I don’t feel the urge to count anything or snap a band on my wrist. I’m wrung out, my body quivering like a dog in a thunderstorm, but just driving seems like enough for me right now. I have no idea where I should go. South, for now, I guess. Back roads all the way, until I hit I-20.
Then I’ll go west. I don’t have a phone, no money or identification. But west has a good sound to it. I remember having heard somewhere that getting a forged driver’s license, passport, birth certificate is possible—even though I don’t have the slightest clue how to go about it. I think I still have Jessica Kyung’s business card somewhere on me. She might be willing to help me. I hope so. She’s the only option I have right now.
A cursory inventory of the truck reveals Luca’s stocked it with food, bottles of water, and a wad of bills that looks like it could last me several weeks. And something else. The truck’s license plate is tucked in the sun visor. Luca must’ve taken it off before he caught up with Heath and me at the gas station. The next time I have to stop, I’ll screw it back on. I’ll keep to the side roads. Someone could have witnessed the green truck that was bearing down on Heath Beck right before he was hit. It’s impossible to know.
The only thing I am sure of is that I want to live. So I will run.
It’s the one thing I know how to do.
Eight Months Later
Twilight in the Canadian summer is a lovely time. Enchanting, some might call it. People who use words like that. People who believe in magic.
The sun kisses the southwestern side of Bowen Island good night, then disappears into Tunstall Bay, and in an instant, you can see the container-ship lights wink against the purple dark. It’s quite a thing. As often as I can, I watch the whole show from the rickety Adirondack chair on the hilltop deck of the house I look after. I’m usually sipping a glass of whatever I’ve chosen from the local wine shop down near the harbor. I’m not picky—red, white, rosé—as long as it smooths over the rough edges. My current brand of magic.
A jaunty horn section drifts from outdoor speakers, making its way through the pines and over to my deck. My next-door neighbors, who I haven’t met and don’t intend to, playing their favorite Pandora jazz mix. First Mel Tormé, then Sam Cooke, and Dean Martin, which is fine. Inevitably, however, Sinatra always comes on. Tonight when it happens, my entire body tenses, but that’s the extent of it. I’m past the counting and hair-band snapping. I know another song will always come after.
Today’s sunset—blue melting into pink, then warming to orangey red—is as spectacular as always. Even so, I’m surprised to find tears dripping down my cheeks. I blot them with the sleeve of my flannel shirt, but don’t move from my chair. I don’t want to go inside—don’t want to take a pill or put on my running shoes and head out for a jog. I mostly walk now, anyway. It feels kinder to my body.
It’s been eight months since I escaped Heath. Not the first time I’ve sat on this deck and cried. Just the first time I’ve done it because I know everything is going to be okay. So I can sit here and ride out the tears, I guess. Sometimes it’s good to just feel things.
Behind me, on the drive, there’s the sound of crunching gravel. It sends jolts of electric fear into my arms and legs. Under the chair, my fingers close around my ever-present canister of bear spray. A reflex.
“Ms. Green?” a man calls from around the side of the house. Somewhere near the foot of the steps.
The voice is oddly familiar.
He must’ve cut through the thicket of blackberry bushes alongside the driveway and come around to the back deck. It doesn’t mean he’s a threat. He may have already tried the front door. I keep the alarm on and everything bolted up even when I’m here.
“Sydney Green? Are you here?”
Leaping up from my chair and knocking over my glass of wine, I run across the deck to the giant spruce that grows up through the middle of it. I slip behind the tree. Press my back against the trunk and carefully ease off the safety on the bear spray. The man is standing on the far side of the deck. I can practically feel the vibration of his breathing across the planks of wood. I wish for a gun. A good old-fashioned American revolver, but this is Canada, and I’m not that resourceful.
“I saw the last name on the mailbox,” the man says. “And the lady down at the market in the cove said she knew a Sydney Green who’s caretaker of this cabin.”
I can’t place the accent—I think I’ve heard it somewhere, but my heart is hammering so hard, I can’t be sure. Footsteps thud, and that out-of-body panic sensation takes hold. He’s getting closer. I will myself to stay put. To wait until he’s within spraying range. When I judge it’s time, I jump out, executing a neat one-eighty and depressing the trigger in short bursts like the YouTube video instructed. The man leaps backward, yelling and windmilling his arms, eventually stumbling down the deck steps.
I throw the can at him, run inside the house, and lock the door, just before I hear him yell out.
“Daphne!”
At my kitchen table, Luca takes the damp washcloth I offer and mops his red, swollen face for the umpteenth time. From a safe distance, I study him. Navy sweater and black jeans. Worn black combat boots, laced halfway up. Wavy brown hair that he keeps raking off his forehead, even though it just falls back in his eyes every time. It’s grown out since I’ve last seen him.
My hair’s different too. Pixie length and dark brown. I keep fiddling with it, oddly self-conscious. Also, I keep apologizing. But that’s only fair. I’m a crack shot with bear spray, and even though the level of capsaicin in it is substantially lower than in the human variety of pepper spray, it still hurts. Good thing I didn’t have a gun.
“It’s okay.” Luca manages to make eye contact with me through one not-so-puffy eye. “You did the right thing.”
“Oh. So you do speak English.”
He does the so-so thing. “Learning. Slowly.”
“No, it’s good. You’re doing great.”
Weirdly, inappropriately, all I can think about is that he’s built exactly like a bear—a human-size, disconcertingly sexy bear—and I’m worried I’m going to say it out loud. It’s been too long since I’ve been alone in a room with a man. I’m fairly certain my filter’s out of whack. Thankfully, he fills the silence.
“You stay here all the time?”
“So far, yeah. The owners only use it for two weeks at the end of every summer. I’ll figure out something to do when they want it.”