“Maybe a little before. Okay?”
She laughed. “Francis, you’ve never been early in your life.”
“You’ll see.”
She laughed again, and felt her anxiety slip away. Tonight she’d make up to Francis for hurting his feelings the other day, and for a brief time—maybe just a night—things could be the way they’d always been. Francis, her Francis, would help her through this rough time and show her the right way. “Okay, Francis. ’Bye.”
Then she hung up.
Thunder grumbled across the black night sky. Lightning snaked from the bloated clouds. Jet-black evergreen trees climbed up a steep granite slope to the right of the road. A ravine fell away from the left side, its edge marked by a silvery guardrail. The blacktop traversed the hillside, unfurled down, down, twisting and turning.
Francis leaned forward and wiped a hand across the foggy interior of the windshield, staring beyond the blurry streaks to the road in front of him. He had the driver’s window partway down, and though it was freezing in the little car, it was the only way he could keep the windshield from getting completely fogged over by his breathing. The defroster was on the blink. Again.
Paul McCartney’s voice crackled through the worn speakers in a mix of static and rhythm, breaking in and out as the serrated tree line grew and receded along the road.
Rain slashed at the car, ran in rivulets across the edge of the windshield, and splattered the side of his face from the half-open window. He couldn’t risk taking a hand from the wheel to wipe the moisture away, so he let it slide down his neck and burrow beneath his sweater, collecting in a cold, itchy noose along his collar.
He hunched forward, peering through the cloudy glass, clutching the leather-wrapped steering wheel. The wiper blades stuttered across the wet glass in a metronomic whick whick whick
He turned a corner and saw with relief that the road straightened. His headlights skipped along the intermittent yellow lane divider. A hint of gray light pushed through the thinning trees, a reminder that he was almost at the base of the hill. Soon he’d be on the interstate, and the storm wouldn’t slow him down but a few miles an hour.
He glanced at the speedometer, saw that he was doing a leisurely thirty-five miles per hour, and tapped the accelerator. The red needle jerked a notch, then climbed up to forty, forty-five. The radio latched on to a solid signal and Patsy Cline’s liquid voice oozed from the speakers. Craaaazy … crazy for feelin’ so blue …
The road swept into a graceful arc to the right. The silvery guardrail glimmered in the headlights’ glow, protecting the road from the steep bank beyond it.
He maneuvered around the turn, singing along with the radio.
He sensed the danger before he saw it. Instinctively Francis cut back on his speed, but it was too late.
In the dim glow of his headlights, he saw a flashing bud of red, heard the shrill whining of a siren. Flares throbbed through the darkness in scraps of color. He yanked his hand from the wheel and smeared his palm across the murky windshield.
It was a police car parked on the side of the road. Beside it, a yellow station wagon was angled across the two lanes. Shadows—people, he realized with a dawning sense of horror—stood alongside the patrol car.
He tried to scream oh, God, no, but the cry lodged in his throat. His hands clamped around the wheel, gripping tight. His foot jumped from the accelerator and slammed onto the brake pedal.
He knew instantly that it was a mistake. The wheels locked hard, rubber screeched on the slick pavement. New tires, he thought irrationally, he needed new tires. These were old and bald and…
The back end of the car skidded around. Francis watched, horrified, as his headlights stabbed into the thicket of trees.
He took his foot off the brake and eased down on the accelerator, trying to regain control. But the car was on its own, pirouetting down the rain-wet asphalt in a horrifying dance that made him dizzy and sick to his stomach. The smell of burning rubber was everywhere.
The guardrail came flying at him. Behind it, a huge tree loomed in the darkness. He thought instantly of the seat belt he wasn’t wearing.
Oh, God, he thought, help me, help m—
The car hit the guardrail and exploded in a shifting, grinding crunch of metal. Francis felt himself pitching forward, forward. I believe in God, the Father— Head smashing through something and the taste of blood. Shattering glass, glass everywhere …
And then quiet.
He heard the dull, whining drone of his car’s horn, blaring through the darkness, and the pattering of rain on the curved metal roof of the Volkswagen. There were voices, coming at him from far, far away. Jesus Christ, Sammy, call an ambulance.
He crawled out of the wreckage, through the trail of broken glass. Strangely, he felt no pain, no pain at all, and the metallic taste of blood had vanished.
Slowly he straightened.
Rain slashed all around him, thumping on the road, running in rivulets in the concrete gully beside him. But he wasn’t wet anymore.
It took him a minute to realize that. When he did, he felt a pinprick of fear.