“Me, too,” Daphne said.
“I wish you weren’t here,” Eddie said. “I wish you were home, but since you aren’t home and you are here, I want to say I can’t think of anyone I’d rather be in a car crash with.”
“Me, too,” Daphne said.
Eddie pulled the silver blanket back over their heads. “We should try to get some sleep now.”
“Good night, Eddie,” she said.
“Good night, Duck,” Eddie said.
And this time Daphne did fall asleep, but Eddie did not because now he understood that there was only one way for this story to go. In the morning Daphne was going to have to crawl out the window alone and try to save them.
At the first crack of dawn they were awake. They might as well have been inside the giant freezer chest at the dock where the Zabriskies stored their fish. Fish shrink-wrapped in plastic and frozen into concrete slabs.
“Daphne?” Eddie said.
“Right here,” she said, and shivered.
“It snowed.”
It had taken Eddie several minutes of staring out the window to pinpoint what was different. In his defense, the light was dim and he hadn’t seen anything at all since yesterday and his brain had turned to ice inside his skull. Why couldn’t he see out the windows? What was that fluffy stuff?
Daphne pulled the silver blanket down, looked around. “Oh boy,” she said.
Had it snowed an inch? A foot? Was it snowing now? From inside the igloo of their existence, nothing could be known.
“I’m going to the bathroom again,” Daphne said. Now she knew the drill so she didn’t have to sit around thinking about it. She got up carefully. One of her legs had been at a weird angle and had fallen asleep. She wiggled her toes until she felt it coming back to life, then swung into the backseat.
“Sing, please,” she said.
Eddie had less energy now. “Lambs, lambs, lambs, lambs, poor and lost, easily tossed, gone away, gone astray.”
“Baa, baa, baa.”
Tights up, onto the armrest for the window crank, turn the crank, and then the block of accumulated snow came straight down on her head, snow down the back of her neck, down the front of her sweater. She shook like a dog.
“Careful!” Eddie said. He could feel the vibration in his leg.
“Sorry. It surprised me.”
“How much is there?”
Daphne went back to get her cup of urine then, stepping onto the armrest again, stuck her head into the snowy morning. She dispensed with the urine first.
“Hand me the cup,” Eddie said. “You can give me the weather report while I’m busy.”
She brought him the cup, then went back up, popping herself out into the cold winter wonderland. “Lots of snow.” Snow everywhere. Snow blown around and stuck to the sides of trees.
“More than six inches?”
“Maybe?” She didn’t know how to tell.
“Is it snowing now?”
“Yes.” Big fat flakes were wafting onto her sock hat. She remembered the cut on her face. Her face felt stiff.
“Can you see anything?”
