She brought her feet up so she was crouching on the seat. She was going to jump out of the car instead of using the door. “I’ll be right back,” she said. And then her lips were pressed into mine hard for a full thirty seconds, or maybe two very long seconds. When she pulled her face away, she whispered, “Thelma and Louise!” Then she jumped out of the car.
The symphony of crickets pulsed and pulsed, and then I could hear her feet on the gravel. That wasn’t good. That meant Peter could hear it, too. But she was going fast. It wouldn’t take long. And maybe he was asleep already. Maybe he slept with the lights on. The sound of her sprinting feet receded and receded. Was I supposed to turn the car on now or wait until I saw her at the mailbox? I decided not to turn it on. It would be too noisy.
I crawled into the driver’s seat and waited. I realized I had never driven this car. The driver’s seat had a different feel to it.
I tried to sit completely still so I could hear everything.
Do you think we should tell your wife?
I can’t tell her yet. Sorry.
I fixed my eyes straight ahead and blinked at the dark.
She was taking too long. Why wasn’t she running back yet? Maybe a problem with the barn door. Maybe it was taking a while to open. A padlock, maybe. I hoped she wasn’t trying to break open a padlock.
And then the gravelly sound. Closer and closer. Good. She was sprinting. I put my hand on the key, ready to turn it, and then there she was! Waving madly, her hands two fast white splotches in the dark. I turned the key. I pressed the accelerator. Too hard. The car jerked forward. Breathe, Nan. I pressed again more lightly. Her hands were telling me to hurry up. I’m coming!
When I got to her, I hit the brakes hard, too hard. She flung the door open and jumped in and before she’d slammed it shut she was already saying, “Go, go! I think he saw me!” She wasn’t laughing at all.
I went numb. “Hurry!” she said. I pressed the gas hard, too hard. We flew. And then a light. At the bottom of the huge property, a light. A figure and a light? What was that light? I wanted to slow down, but we had to go fast, we had to hurry. The light was moving into the road so I veered left and I wasn’t breathing, and just when I thought, okay, yes, we have enough room to pass, Ana pulled the steering wheel right so hard and so fast I thought we might flip, and I jammed my foot into the brake but not fast enough and then there was a thud, not a smack or a pop but a thud, and it was alarmingly soft. Please oh please please let that be a coyote, please please, but that doesn’t make sense—there are no coyotes in Hawaii—and I was paralyzed and then there was the sound of plastic, yes, plastic, and it was rolling, rolling, and it was a flashlight rolling down the hill.
I pressed both hands hard into my chest. My heart was beating fast. A thin layer of sweat all over my body. The still night, the crickets, and then an unexpected gust of wind. “Stay here,” Ana said. She opened the door.
My hands shaking. Violently shaking. Ana walked closer, closer, closer to the thing we had hit and then she stopped. Her eyes on the ground. She lifted her hand to cover her mouth. She kept her hand there. She stayed for one, two, three, and then she walked back to the car and got in. She took her hand off her mouth. She said, “We need to leave.”
I couldn’t move.
“Now,” she said. She put us in reverse. My hands trembling. I looked over my shoulder. I backed up fast, too fast again, and I winced. She put us in drive.
What I saw then. Jeans, a sleeveless teal shirt, blood on the back of his head.
My breath losing control and my eyes seeing double, triple, and I blinked and blinked and my hands were on my chest, pressing hard into my heart.
Ana inhaled and exhaled deeply. “Drive.”
A second gust of wind.
I drove.
30
I took three pills and stayed on the farthest side of the bed. Ana moved closer. And closer. And closer.
“Do you want to talk?”
“Do you want to talk?”
“Are you sure you don’t want to talk about this, Nan?”
I didn’t answer. She put her arm around me. It felt heavy. I didn’t move. Outside, the sound of rain, drowning the crickets.
“It was an accident,” she whispered.
“You swerved the car,” I said.
“You were running us off the road,” she said.
“But you hit him. Why did you hit him?”
“I hit him? You were driving.”
“But you swerved the car, Ana.”
“And you didn’t stop me, Nan. You could have stopped me and you didn’t.”
“I couldn’t have stopped you. You pulled the wheel so hard.”
“I didn’t pull it that hard.”
“This is not my fault,” I said.
“We were confused.”
“This is your fault.”
“We did this together.”
“You did this.”
“We did this.”
“That poor man.”
“He was a bad man.”
“You don’t know that. How could you know that?”
“He beat his horse, Nan. And probably his wife if he had one. He was a bad man. Trust me. I know bad men.”
“What if we get caught?”
“If we get caught,” she sighed, “I will take the fall for us.” She placed her hand on my hair. “I’m dying anyway. We can say I did it.”
“You did do it,” I pleaded.
Ana stroked her fingers through my hair. “Oh, sister.”
31
In the morning, rain, hard and pounding. The wind shook the windows, shook the house. I watched the trees be whipped by the wind and the windows be drowned by the rain. A planter fell off the lanai and crashed. I turned to face Ana, but she wasn’t there.
Sandpaper mouth, groggy. I still hadn’t cried. I reached for my water glass. As I drank I thought: I don’t deserve this comfort, a man is dead. The car, the swerve. How tightly I had held the wheel. But how tightly had I held the wheel? Could I have pulled us back? Could I have stopped her? Us? It?
The thud, the flashlight rolling, rolling. How Peter’s body had landed. Like he was sleeping. The teal shirt, the blood. The memory of him at the tarot stand. “When I feel the jitters, I take a stick to my horse.” His jittery leg. His scrawny arms. “After the horse, I take the stick to myself.” The bruises he must have had somewhere on his body. What his last name was. If he had a wife, children. A job where people expected him to show up. Other places he went.
There were many things on the nightstand, but all I saw was my phone. You should call the police, Nan. Nancy. Nancy, you should call the police. But what would I say? It didn’t make sense. “It was her fault, it was not my fault.” But I had been driving. That’s what they would say. They would say, “How was it her fault when you were driving?” And how would I respond? “We were sort of both driving. It might be hard to understand.” And they would say, “That is correct, we do not understand.” And then what? Sirens, handcuffs, rooms with two-way mirrors. Orange jumpsuit, courtrooms, prison. The boys in pieces, Chuck in pieces, all of us in pieces.
Another planter crashed on the lanai. I went to the window. The glass was shaking. Chuck’s car was gone. The boys’ car was gone. The half-built shed shuddered in the wind. A branch fell to the ground. Another. Time was passing. Too much time had passed. They would say, “If it wasn’t your fault, then why did you wait so long to call?”
?