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His eyes found mine and didn’t let go. He knew exactly what his presence did to me.
Callie noticed, because of course she did. When I turned to pick up my luggage, she playfully mouthed, “What the fuck?”
Damian loaded our luggage into the trunk, then Callie climbed into the backseat.
I glanced once at the front seat, then caught the slightest nod from Damian, and took it. I had no idea how I was going to survive the ride home without staring at him.
The jeep eased around the switchback and the cove disappeared behind us. Callie scrolled her phone for a signal that wouldn’t come until we cleared the next ridge.
“Did you guys feed Bram?” she said, still angling her phone like she might catch a signal if she tilted it right. “I was going to feed him this morning and I forgot, and I’m so bummed because he’s such a cute little—”
I sat up, exactly the way I’d sit up at three in the morning if I’d just heard a strange noise in my apartment.
“Where’s the goat?” I said.
Callie stopped.
The inside of the jeep went very quiet. I heard the road under us, and the wind in the trees, and the growl of the engine.
Damian’s hands tightened on the wheel.
I watched them tighten. I watched the tendons in the back of his right hand stand up and lie down again. I watched him not look at me.
“Damian,” I said.
“You don’t want to know,” he said.
He said it gently, the way parents tell children that the dog has gone to live on a farm. He said it as if he’d said it before, to other women, on other mornings.
I didn’t ask again. I sat, dumbly, thinking about the tickle of Bram’s muzzle against my hand and his honey-yellow eyes. His little bell and his high-pitched baby bleat.
Callie was crying without making any noise. I reached back between the seats and found her hand and held it, and we drove like that, the three of us, in the small dark capsule of the jeep, with the cove and the kitchen and Bram and Aurora and the bowl of cloths all behind us, getting smaller.
When I released Callie’s hand, she started typing on her phone with her thumbs, blinking through tears. Then my own phone lit, and I glanced at the group chat.
Callie changed the chat name from “Proof of Life” to “Cult Survivors.”
She put the phone in her lap and looked at the chat name, then pulled her knees up and curled into a ball on the backseat.
Damian’s hands remained on the wheel and his jaw stayed set, and I knew that he’d seen the chat name on the screen of my phone, which was face-up between us in the cup holder. He didn’t say a word about it.
“I’m so sorry I’m a mess, guys. I don’t know why I’m sorry,” Callie murmured, then fell asleep.
Another chat notification. I picked up the phone again.
Priya: ok so honest forensics check, since Callie’s calling a spade a spade
Priya: how shaky are we all
definitely shaky, I typed, then watched three dots bounce under my reply.
Priya: I just dropped my water bottle twice
The dots bounced again.
Jess: I’m fine
Priya: Jess
