Then the engine coughed.
Sam looked at the dashboard. Stella looked at the dashboard. The needle was below the line. Well below. Resting on the little orange bar that meant the car was running on fumes.
“Oh,” Sam said.
The engine coughed again. Sam coasted to the shoulder—if you could call it a shoulder, it was more like a wide spot in the gravel—and the car rolled to a stop and the engine went quiet.
The cooling engine ticked in the silence. The cold started creeping in without the heater. The sky above them was magnificent. The car was not running.
“This has happened before,” Sam said, like a woman describing weather. “There’s a station on 179. I just need to—” She patted the center console. Checked the cup holders. Looked in her purse. “My phone. I think I left it at the restaurant.”
“You left your phone at the restaurant?” Stella asked.
“I set it on the table when Elena came over and I must have—” Sam turned around in her seat. “Bea, do you have yours?”
“No service,” Bea said, holding her phone up. The screen glowed in the dark car. No bars.
Sam tried the ignition. Nothing. She tried again. The engine turned over once and quit.
“Okay,” Sam said. “This is fine. Someone will come along.”
“We’re on a ridge road at ten o’clock at night,” Stella said. “Nobody is coming along.”
“Someone might.”
“Nobody is coming along, Sam.”
Stella reached into the front pocket of her bag. The pocket where she kept her wallet, her backup battery, and the small laminated card Tyler had put in her hand the day before she left.
“What’s that?” Sam asked.
“AAA.” Stella held up the card. Tyler Walsh, Member Since 2019. “My dad gave it to me. He said ‘you never know.’”
“Tyler has AAA?”
“Tyler has AAA and a jumper cable kit and a flashlight in every vehicle he owns. He’s Tyler.” Stella pulled out her phone—no service either, but she’d downloaded the offline emergency number before the trip because Tyler had told her to. She tried it. Nothing.
“We need to get to higher ground,” Stella said. She looked at the ridge above them.
“Stella, you are not walking up a ridge in the dark.”
“I’m walking up a ridge in the dark to get one bar of service to call AAA with my dad’s card to get us home. Stay here.”
She took the flashlight from her bag—the small one she used in the darkroom—and got out of the car. The air was cold and smelled like juniper and dust.
She walked up the ridge. The beam of the flashlight caught the red dirt and loose gravel under her boots, each step sliding a little before it held. It took about four minutes. She held her phone up and watched the bars. Nothing. Nothing. One bar. One bar flickering. She stood very still.
She dialed. It rang. A voice answered.
“AAA roadside assistance, how can I help you?”
“Hi. My grandmother’s car ran out of gas on a road outside Sedona. Member number is on the card.” She read off Tyler’s number. Gave the location as best she could—ridge road off 179, about two miles past the turnoff, dark Subaru on the shoulder.
“We’ll have someone there in about forty-five minutes, ma’am.”
“Thank you.”
Sam and Bea were standing outside the car now, looking up at the sky, which was the only thing to do when your car was dead and the night was that big.
