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We look at each other. Then, hands still locked together, we break into a run.

“They’ll see the hazards,” Henry says as we run. “Two sets of blinking hazards. And the rain’s stopped. It’s a straight road. No way they can miss…”

He trails off as we burst from the forest into darkness. I can see the cars, thirty feet to our left. But the hazards aren’t blinking. The vehicles are dark hulks against a pitch-black night.

I wheel toward the glare of the oncoming headlights, and I frantically wave my flashlight. The light is bright, swooping across the car’s path, and there’s no possible way the driver can miss—

“Stop!” Henry shouts as he lunges onto the road.

I yelp, imagining him leaping into the path of that speeding car, but he only runs a few feet out, waving his arms and shouting at the top of his voice.

None of it matters. I know that as soon as I realize the car isn’t slowing, isn’t veering, isn’t doing anything except roaring toward the collision. At the last second, Henry lunges again, my way this time, knocking me from the shoulder.

ELEVENEDGAR

Edgar is dreaming that he’s happily driving along a forest road at night, in a thunderstorm. In real life, he’d be jamming his gas pedal down to get wherever he was going, bored of the monotony of the rain and the darkness and empty road. But that only proved that even the most mundane tasks become interesting when you’re deprived of them.

Yes, no one “deprived” him of driving. He’d voluntarily surrendered his license on his eightieth birthday, having always vowed to do so after his father kept driving until he struck a child, putting the poor girl into a wheelchair for life. His father had gone to his grave insisting it wasn’t his fault, that the girl “darted out” despite witnesses who said she’d been riding her bike along the shoulder. His father’s eyesight had just been so bad that he never saw her. So Edgar and his wife, Sunila, made a vow to surrender their licenses when they turned eighty.

Sunila had given hers up five years ago, in the first stages of dementia. That meant that when it was Edgar’s turn, part of him had rebelled, saying Sunila needed him to drive and he could still pass the test and his reflexes were fine. But then, during one of her lucid spells, Sunila pointed out that what she needed was him. Alive and healthy. Because if anything happened to Edgar, she’d end up in a home. They didn’t have kids to help out, and she’d never have burdened one of their many nieces or nephews with her care.

So Edgar surrendered his license and, after those first few months, he hadn’t missed it. Of course, it helped that they’d rented their garage apartment to a young man who worked from home and was happy to provide chauffeur services for discounted rent.

But now, dreaming that he’s driving in this storm, Edgar finds something he hadn’t realized he lost. Something he hadn’t truly appreciated when he had the chance. He’d never been much of a driver. Sunila liked being behind the wheel and that had been fine with him. He’d been happy to walk to the campus where he’d worked as a professor.

Yet here he is, dreaming of driving and loving it. His friend Barry, a psychologist, would probably say it wasn’t the driving so much as the freedom that Edgar misses. Or maybe, if you dig deeper, it’s the sense of control. In the dream, the world is dark and a storm rages—symbols for his fears for Sunila and his frustrations with his own advancing age—but here he is, driving along, in control of everything.

Even in life, though, he’s still mostly in control. He’d had a rough few years, and maybe he’d sulked. Not in front of Sunila, of course. But sometimes, when she was sleeping or watching TV, he’d sit in his office and sulk. Barry would call it grieving, but it felt like sulking.

Edgar had never wanted to retire. Neither had Sunila—she was a scientist, and her mind had always been sharper than his. When the dementia took hold, she’d had to leave her job, but Edgar had planned to hold on to his … until the college forced him out. Worse, it wasn’t some Machiavellian scheme to oust an old prof. It wasn’t even some twisted kind of blame after what happened to that poor girl. No, it was almost as if they’d forgotten he was still there, and then the administration woke up and called him into a meeting.

Take some time off. Travel with your wife. Susan, isn’t it?

They didn’t know her name, and they didn’t know what was happening to her. They only knew that Edgar was old. To add insult to injury, he and Sunila had wanted to travel, but just before the dementia hit, the college administration begged him to teach for two summers straight, promising to “make it up to him,” and he and Sunila had postponed their plans. Postponed forever.

So Edgar had sulked. Dwelled on what he’d lost and what he’d never have. With every passing month, he seemed to lose a little more of Sunila, and instead of embracing what he still had while he had it, he sulked.

Well, no more. Maybe that’s what this dream is telling him. That he needs to get back in the driver’s seat of his own damn life.

He lifts his foot from the pedal. As he does, his sole sticks, almost as if …

He’s barefoot.

Driving in bare feet? He shakes his head. Well, that’s a dream for you. He adjusts his right foot on the gas, and it feels … wet?

Edgar scrunches the toes on his left foot. Definitely wet, along with the cuff of his trousers. He glances down. No, the cuff of his pajamas. He’s wearing his pajamas, and his feet aren’t just wet—they’re itchy, as if he’s walked through newly cut damp grass and some stuck to him.

And whose car is this? Not the one he and Sunila last shared, which had been an Audi. This is something about that size, but the steering wheel says Ford. Right. Luke, their boarder, drives a Ford, though Edgar mostly only sees it from the back seat, where he sits with Sunila.

A kernel of fear swirls in Edgar’s gut. He’s in his boarder’s car, dressed in what he wore to bed, his feet wet and grassy, after Luke cut the grass last night. It’s as if—

No, he wouldn’t be able to drive Luke’s car. He doesn’t have a key.

Except he does. Luke keeps his spare on the key rack, after that time Sunila left her purse in his car and Edgar had said they’d get it in the morning, but then she woke in an episode, convinced someone had broken in and stolen it. Now Luke left them a key, being thoughtful as usual.

Is this a dream?

Or did Edgar take Luke’s key and car in some kind of fugue state? An early sign of dementia?