Norah visualized the impenetrable metal gate she’d built around herself coming back up, complete with a moat and menwith cannons and archers ready to shoot. She’d pictured this scenario every time she thought about Chase over the years, and for some reason, it always helped. She knew where this story was headed. She’d read it before, the ending already written in clear, perfect print on a pristine white page. All at once the wall came down, and every minute of their wonderful, torrid past came hurtling at Norah’s brain like a meteor shower. Chase’s eyes stayed locked on hers, and Norah realized Chase had yet to really look at her until that moment, like she was afraid to. They were gentle and safe, free from the slightly arrogant flirtation Norah had become familiar with over the last few days. This was the Chase she wanted to remember—kind, open. The Chase who gave her heart to Norah unapologetically and loved her so hard Norah couldn’t help but love her back. This was the Chase she’d fallen in love with. And, as frightening as it was, maybe the Chase Durgin a part of her still loved.
Chase had hardly touched her pulled pork by the time the check came. From a culinary standpoint it was actually quite good—certainly better than the general vibe Tito’s suggested. But the moment with Norah, which felt like an hour, had sent Chase’s head spinning off into space and, with it, her appetite. She knew she’d go back to her tent that night and repeatedly replay the way Norah’s hand felt in hers for that one perfect second, the way Norah ever-so-slightly returned her gentle squeeze. The air had buzzed between them as their eyes met, really met, for just long enough. They sat in a heated silence, the kind of silence that could only come from two people who knew each other’s souls. Chase had spent the last decade missing Norah. And it didn’t take long after their demise for her to begin wishing every day she’d never taken that fellowship at Georgetown. Or that she’d dropped everything to be there for Norah when Davey died. Itdidn’t take long until Chase began wishing she could have done everything differently. As far as she still knew, time travel didn’t exist. But maybe second chances did.
“I can’t believe it’s already ten p.m.,” Norah said as they walked back to their lone jeep in the now-deserted Tito’s parking lot.
“Time flies when there’s half decent BBQ in aTexas Chainsaw Massacre-esque murder town involved.”
Norah’s laugh flittered through the air, and Chase’s heart did some familiar gymnastics. Chase was waiting for the inevitable force field to come up. Even in the rare moments since their reunion when Norah had seemed to let her guard down, she had just as quickly reinstated it, and Chase knew she was on borrowed time. But Norah still felt light to Chase, that same airy quality she’d exuded as their hands touched still noticeably present. Eventually, Norah would shut down again. She would decide Chase, and the past, were too dangerous, and her heart was safer tucked far away from both of those things. But for now, Chase had access to that heart.
They drove down the winding dirt road in that same comfortable silence, the still-present heat cut with the breeze from the now-topless Wrangler. Chase kept looking out the window, enjoying the feeling of wind tousling her short hair. They didn’t talk about pandemics or mortality rates or R0. And Chase couldn’t remember being more at peace in the last ten-plus years.
“Where is this GPS taking us?” Norah finally asked. They’d been traveling for what seemed like a hundred miles down various dark, deserted roads, following the Google Maps on Norah’s phone, which sat in a holder on the windshield.
“This definitely isn’t the way we came in, for sure.” Chase wasn’t concerned. In fact, she was secretly grateful for what could prove to be extra time with Norah.
They continued to follow the woman’s voice that gently chimed from the iPhone speaker for another fifteen miles, Chase absolutely certain at this point that something wasn’t right. Maybe the GPS was just taking them on some expedited back route to avoid the highway? Before she could finish the thought, a chorus of loud “dings” came from the jeep’s dash, followed by an array of orange warning lights.
“Fuck,” Norah muttered. As if saying “fuck” itself, the jeep sputtered and jolted before finally seizing up completely, and Norah calmly and carefully guided it to the side of the road as best she could.
They came to a gentle stop, and Norah kept both hands on the wheel, at ten and two, like always, looking directly into the pitch-black horizon. She seemed to take a couple of long, slow breaths and then let them go, turning to Chase.
“Okay. So, I don’t know the first thing about cars. I don’t suppose you took any auto-shop courses since we last met, did you?” Norah’s voice was steady and low, exactly what Chase remembered in a crisis.
“Can’t say that I did. But those lights don’t look good. That one has a big exclamation point in an orange triangle. The other one looks like a windy road with another exclamation point. And that one—”
“I can see them too, Chase.” Norah didn’t snap, and her tone remained even, allowing Chase’s increasing anxiety to ease a little. Norah tried to turn the key in the ignition several more times, but the jeep just sputtered and died, until finally, the engine stopped responding entirely.
“What do we do?”
“We call for someone to come get us.”
Obviously, Chase thought. Strangely for a doctor, Chase often tended to let her mind seize up during an emergency, not unlike the dead jeep they occupied. Norah took her phone out ofthe holder. The Google Maps app flashed a red “searching for network” warning on the top.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Norah closed her eyes and shook her head.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“No signal. Here. Check yours.”
Obviously, Chase thought. She reached into her pocket and plucked out her phone, tapping furiously on the screen, but the tinyLTEicon that normally sat in the upper right corner of the screen was nowhere to be found, and the little bars that usually occupied the space next to it were nothing but flat lines.
“Nothing.”
Norah went silent again, and Chase could practically see the cogs spinning at a breakneck pace. She thought back to Brown, reluctantly remembering the time Chase had found a roach skittering through their kitchen. Fueled by pure fear, Chase could think of nothing better to do than throw the biggest textbook she could find (she remembered it asGuyton and Hall, although really it could have beenDubinsor evenGray’s Anatomy) at the insect as it made a break for one of the cracks in the floorboards. Luckily, the landing stuck, and the roach was presumed a pile of guts under several hundred pages of disease pathology. Then came the question of what to do with the thing. Of course, Chase was far too freaked out to think that far ahead. So she left it until Norah, who didn’t make it home until sometime after nine p.m. that night, sent Chase into the neighboring living room, removed the book, bug guts and all, and the rest Chase had no idea about. Norah was so classically the hero. And not just when it came to exterminating pesky apartment roaches either. She had always been Chase’s calm in the eye of the storm. And it was apparent that nothing had changed.
“We could walk?” Chase suggested, finally. She could at least pretend to be helpful.
“A good thought,” Norah responded kindly, in a way you might congratulate a kid on a drawing of a cat that resembled arodent. “But I bet we’re a good distance from any kind of town. The restaurant was at least twenty miles back the other way, and we don’t know what, if anything, is in front of us. Plus, we’re in the middle of nowhere Louisiana. We could encounter alligators, or cougars, or God knows what.”
“Or crazy murderers,” Chase said, her mind once again playing flashbacks ofThe Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Norah laughed a little, although with a hint of tension behind the sound that hadn’t been there before.
“Or that. I imagine someone will drive by at some point. Our best bet is to sit tight until they do.”
“What about GPS? Isn’t this the army’s jeep? It must have some kind of, I don’t know, tracking device or something?” Chase jumped eagerly at what had to be the first intelligent proposal she’d had all night.
“I wish. This thing is about fifteen years old. The only thing it can track is dirt.”
Chase shrugged. “Tax dollars hard at work.”
