“Unless you prefer Mrs.Mather’s chicken and rice.I’ve had it.Wouldn’t recommend.”
She stares at me.In the dark.In my truck.On a road that Emily used to run on Sundays.And then she laughs.Not the performance laugh.Not even the tired laugh from earlier today.A real laugh—the kind that comes from a place past fear, past logic, past the point where anything makes sense anymore.
“Fine,” she says.“But you owe me an explanation.And a drink.”She brushes glass off her jeans.Uses the flashlight on her phone to check her face in the visor mirror.Dabs the cut with her sleeve.Flips the visor shut.“Drive.”
I drive.
The road is empty.The night is quiet.Somewhere behind us, a black pickup is in a ditch with two men who are going to wake up sore and stupid and alive.I’ll deal with them later.Right now I’m driving a woman with glass in her hair to a restaurant she’s never been to, and the only thought in my head is that she didn’t ask me to take her home.
She asked me to drive.
42
Marin
Malone’s has candles on the tables and paper napkins in the dispenser, like it can’t decide what it wants to be.We walk in with glass in our hair and blood drying on my forehead and the hostess doesn’t bat an eye.Either she’s seen worse or she’s very professional.
Corner booth.Luke orders bourbon.I order wine.The waitress brings bread and I eat three pieces before I realize I’m starving and can’t remember the last meal I had that wasn’t standing over a sink or sitting on a staircase or hunched over a makeshift desk.
“So,” I say.“Explain.”
He does.Not everything—I can tell he’s editing.But enough.
“So…” he says.
I know what he’s about to ask and I’m delaying.“So what?”
“Your turn.How long are you planning to keep this going?”
I set my wine down.“Keep what going?”
“All of it.The house.The basement.The cover story.Him.”
“As long as it takes.”
“As long as what takes?”
“The reset.The plan.Charles coming around.”
Luke looks at me over his bourbon.Patient.Unhurried.The way he looks at everything—like he’s already measured it twice and is waiting for me to catch up.
“And if he doesn’t come around?”
“He will.”
“But if he doesn’t?”
I tear a piece of bread.Don’t eat it.Just hold it.“He will.He’s already different.He asked if we could do a movie night.He used to never want to do movie nights.The conversations we’re having…it’s like we’re finally getting somewhere.He’s starting to understand—I can see it.He’s?—”
“He pissed the bed four times, Marin.”
“That’s a setback.”
“That’s a man who’s not coming around.”
The bread goes back on the plate.I pick up my wine.Put it down.Pick it up again.“What’s your point?”
“My point is you don’t have an endgame.You have a beginning and a middle and a whole lot of hope, but you don’t have an ending.What does this look like when it works?He falls in love with you in a basement?You untie him and he says thank you?You walk into the sunset with a man you transported across state lines in the trunk of your car?”
