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Tomorrow the dog had a vet appointment. Arwen had kindergarten. Gandy needed new shoes. The floor in the kitchen badly needed a mopping, which she meant to do after paying the last round of bills for the month…and if she had time she wanted to finish reorganizing her closet. And through it all, the knowledge that no matter how many tasks she began, she’d complete none of them without being interrupted. Being demanded of. Being expected to take care of someone else’s needs.
Tonight a man had held her at knifepoint and threatened to take away that tomorrow with its lists and chores and demands. If nothing else, no matter what else happened, how things turned out, Gilly would not have to heave her weary body out of bed and force herself to get through one more day. If she was really unfortunate, and a glance at the twitching young man beside her told her she might be, she might never have to get out of bed again.
The thought didn’t scare her as much as it should have.
He shifted. “I need to get to Route 80.”
“I’m not sure…”
“I’ll tell you.”
In a brief flash of light from the streetlamp, she saw his forehead had furrowed with concentration. Gilly looked to the road ahead, at the lights of oncoming cars and the lit exit signs. The man ordered her to take the exit for the interstate, and she did. Then he slumped in his seat, head against the window, and the sound of his tortured breathing filled her ears like the sound of the ocean, constant and steady.
In the silence, uninterrupted by cries and demands, Gilly let her mind fall blank again as she drove on. Her rage and terror had passed, replaced by something quiet and sly.
Relief.
2
Thud, thud. Thud, thud. Thud, thud. The truck’s wheels passed over asphalt cracks with a sound like a beating heart. For an hour or so her abductor had told her which roads to take, what highways to follow. Some were small, obscure back-country lanes, some major four-lane roads, all of them dark and fairly clear of traffic. She didn’t know if he meant to dodge pursuit, was lost, or had a plan. He’d listened to the radio for a while, switching stations, pausing at a commercial for the built-in navigation service that came with all the newer model cars.
He’d run his fingertips over the dash. “You got that?”
“No. It was only an option when we bought the truck, and we didn’t take the option.”
On the radio, the soft-voiced operator assured the sniveling woman that she was going to be just fine. The commercial narrator reminded everyone what a lifesaver the service was. The man had seemed pleased and switched the station, finally settling on the weather. They were predicting snow. His eyes had closed several miles back. His breathing had slowed, joined with the heartbeat of their passage, to soothe and lull her further into blankness.
Into quiet.
When Gilly was growing up, her best friend’s house had been full of constant noise. Danica had four brothers and a sister, plus a dog, a cat, a bird and several tanks full of fish. Her parents yelled a lot, mostly to be heard over the rest of the roar. Gilly loved spending time at Danica’s house, but she’d often come home from a visit with her head whirling, slipping into her solitary bedroom and putting her head under the pillow to muffle even the silence that almost always greeted her.
It wasn’t until she’d had kids of her own that Gilly realized noise was normal. Most families lived with it. Shouts, laughter, calling to each other from room to room. The burble of the radio, television. These were the sounds of normal families. She’d come to appreciate the noise of normality, but could never quite relish it the way she now savored the silence in the car. It had been a long, long time since she’d been in silence like this, been granted the choice to stay silent, herself.
Gilly drank the quiet like it was wine, and felt nearly as drunk from it. No whining, no complaining. Nobody asking to stop to pee or to change the radio station. Nobody ignoring directions. Nobody grumbling she was going too slow or too fast. Nothing but an occasional sigh from the man in the driver’s seat beside her, or the clink of metal to remind her he still had the knife ready at his side.
The man beside her came awake with a snort and flailing arms. The knife hissed through the air scant inches from her hand and arm, then knocked against the center console, rattling it. Gilly swerved across the center line and back, heart pounding. The man sat up and scrubbed at his face with the hand not wielding the weapon.
“Fuck!”
Gilly shifted in her seat and repositioned her hands on the wheel. She didn’t say anything. Her abductor muttered and tapped the hilt of the blade in his hands, then apparently decided to pretend he hadn’t been sleeping at all. Maybe he thought she hadn’t noticed.
“Where are we?” he blurted as if he didn’t realize she ought to be the one with the questions.
Gilly told him by tilting her head toward the road sign they’d just passed. They’d been on the road for two hours. Her thoughts drifted briefly to Arwen and Gandy. Had Seth picked them up yet? Were they home, safe in bed? It was past their bedtime, and Arwen was impossible in the mornings if she didn’t have enough sleep….
“I asked you a question!”
The rap of the knife’s blade against her shoulder made the car jerk beneath her startled hands. Gilly yelped, though he’d only tapped her with the flat of it. She steadied the massive truck, visions of rolling the huge vehicle punching any other thoughts from her head.
“Pay attention!”
“Sorry,” she said, but she didn’t sound it. She tried again. “Sorry.”
She told him out loud, though by now they’d passed another sign. She watched him scowl at the white letters on the green background, and wondered if he couldn’t read. He pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and held it up, turning on the map light to look at it.
“We need Route 80.” He shook the paper at her. “You didn’t go the wrong way, did you?”
The unfairness of the accusation stung her into response. “You’re the one telling me which way to go!”
She regretted her outburst when he bared his teeth, blood grimed in the cracks, and lifted the knife.
“I have a knife.” His voice was hoarse.
“I know you do.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m some kind of fucking idiot.”
If he was going to cut her, he wouldn’t do it while she was driving. He’d make her pull over first. Wouldn’t he?
“Sorry.”
“Okay.” He seemed to think they’d reached some sort of mutual agreement. Gilly didn’t know what it might be, but she wasn’t going to argue.
“We haven’t passed Route 80 yet.”
He held up the soiled scrap of paper again. “That’s where we need to go.”
“We haven’t even made it to State College,” Gilly said, not pointing out they’d have been long past there if he hadn’t made her take such a crazy, circuitous route.
Gilly waited to hear what he’d say next. He didn’t speak. The tires thudded. She felt him staring.
“We’re going to need gas,” she said at last, since even though she loved the quiet, craved it, it frightened her. “Depending on how far we’re going.”
He leaned close to her to look at the gas gauge. She expected a whiff of sweat, of dirt. An angry or scary odor, something bad.
He smelled like soap and cold air. For the first time she noticed he didn’t even wear a winter coat, only jeans and a worn hooded sweatshirt with a zipper. In the green dashboard illumination she couldn’t tell the color, but everything on him was dark. Hair, eyes, the growing scruff of a beard she could just make out. A quick glance at his feet revealed huge and battered hiking boots.
“Fuck.” He leaned back into his seat. The knife seemed forgotten at his side, but she wasn’t sure she could trust that impression. One sudden move and she could find herself with four inches of steel inside her.
Later, when it was all over and she could be totally honest with herself, Gilly would think it was that clean scent of soap and fresh air that let him keep her. That and the silence. People assumed it was the knife, and she never disabused them of that notion, but Gilly knew the truth. He smelled good, and he didn’t talk much. It was wrong…but right then, it was enough.
They drove a few more miles in the silence before he sighed heavily and rubbed his eyes. “How much longer before we have to stop?”
She looked at the gauge. “We have less than a quarter of a tank.”
Her captor made a muffled sound of disgust. “Next gas station, stop.”
They weren’t on a particularly populous stretch of road, but it wouldn’t be long before they found a station. He leaned forward again to punch the button on the radio and found only static. He punched the button to play the CD. The familiar words of a lullaby, albeit one unconventional and untraditional, blared from the speakers.
“What the hell is this?” He turned down the volume.
Her smile felt out of place but she couldn’t stop it. “Bat Boy: The Musical.”
He listened for a moment longer to the words, a mother’s gentle promise to nurture the unloved and unwelcome bat-child found in a cave and brought to her home. The song was one Gilly liked to sing along with, but she didn’t now. When it was over and the next song from the campy rock musical had taken over, he stabbed the button on the stereo to turn it off.
“That’s weird,” he said bluntly. “You listen to that with your kids in the car?”
She thought of Arwen, who hadn’t seen the show but loved to sing along with the songs too. “Yes.”
He shook his head. “Damn. What’s it about?”
His voice had a smoker’s rasp. He talked slowly, as if choosing each word was a mental strain, but he didn’t slur his words or use bad grammar. His voice matched the rest of him, unkempt and battered.
“It’s about Bat Boy.” Gilly’s eyes scanned the road signs, looking for one that showed an exit or gas station ahead. “It’s…it’s just fun.”
“Who the hell is Bat Boy?”
She hesitated, knowing already how the answer would sound. “He’s half human, half bat. They found him in a cave down in Virginia.”
“You’re shitting me.” Even his curses were clipped and precise, as though he was speaking written dialogue instead of his own thoughts.
“It’s a story,” she said. “From the Weekly World News. I don’t think it’s real.”
He laughed. “No shit.”
“There’s a gas station ahead. Do you want me to pull over?”
She tensed, waiting for his answer. He shrugged, leaned forward to check the gas gauge again. “Yeah.”
She signaled and slowed to exit. Her heartbeat accelerated and her palms grew moist. Anxiety gripped her, and a sense of loss she refused to acknowledge because she didn’t want to think what it meant.
Apparently he remembered the knife, for now he pulled it up and waved it at her again. “Don’t forget I have this.”
As if she could. “No.”
Ahead of them was the parking lot, busy even at this time of night. Bright lights made Gilly squint. She pulled the truck up to the pumps and turned off the engine. She waited for instructions, though normally being told what to do chafed at her. Now she felt as though she could do nothing else but wait to be told what to do. How to do it.
He leaned close enough to kiss her. His breath smelled like Big Red gum. “Give me the keys.”
Gilly pulled them from the ignition and passed them into his palm. His fingers closed over hers, squeezing. She winced.
“If you so much as flick the headlights, I will gut you like a deer. You got that?”
She nodded.
“I’ll pump.” He waited, looking at her. She saw a flicker of apprehension flash across his face, so fast she wasn’t sure she saw it at all. He held up the knife, but low so anyone looking at them wouldn’t see it through the windows. “Don’t get out of the car. Don’t do anything. Remember what I said.”
She expected him to ask for money. “I don’t have my purse.”
He made that sound of disgust again, and now he sounded contemptuous, too. “I don’t need your money.”
He folded the knife and put it into a leather sheath on his belt, slipped the keys into his pocket, then opened his door and went around to the pump, using the keyless remote to lock the door. He fumbled with the buttons and the handle, finally getting the gas to start. Then he went inside.
Gilly sat and watched him. After a moment, stunned, she realized this was the second time he’d let his attention slide from her. She sat a moment longer, seeing him choose items from the cooler, the racks of snacks and the magazine section.
From this distance she had her first good look at him. He was tall, at least six-two or -three, if she judged correctly. She’d seen his hair was dark, but in the fluorescent lights of the minimart it proved to be a deep chestnut that fell in shaggy sheaves to just below his shoulders. He didn’t smile at the clerk and didn’t appear to be making small talk, either, as he put his substantial pile of goods on the counter. He motioned to the clerk for several cartons of cigarettes, Marlboro Reds. He was spending a lot of money.
He didn’t hurry. He didn’t look nervous or wary. She could see the knife in its leather sheath from here, peeking from beneath the hem of his dark gray sweatshirt, but this was rural Pennsylvania. Deer-hunting country. Nobody would look at it twice, unless it was to admire it.
Outside, the gas pump clicked off. Gilly shifted in her seat. Inside the market, her abductor pulled an envelope from his sweatshirt pocket and rifled through the contents. He offered a few bills to the clerk, who took the money and started bagging the purchases.
This was it. She could run. He wouldn’t chase her. If he did, he couldn’t catch her.
She could scream. People would hear. Someone would come. Someone would help her.
She breathed again, not screaming. The white-faced and thin-lipped woman in the rearview mirror could not be her. The smile she forced looked more like the baring of teeth, a feral grin more frightening than friendly.
Time had slowed and stopped, frozen. She’d felt this once when she’d hit a deer springing out from the woods near her house. One moment the road had been clear, the next her window filled with tawny fur, a body crushing into the front end of the truck and sliding across the windshield to break the glass. She’d seen every stone on the street, every hair on the deer’s body before it had all become a haze.
Today she’d felt that slow-syrup of time stopping twice. The first when the man slid across the seat and pointed a knife at her head. The second time was now.
She wasn’t going back. Not to the vet appointments, the ballet practice, the laundry and the bills. She wasn’t going back to the neediness, the whining, the constant, never-ending demands from spouse and spawn that left her feeling on some days her head might simply explode. She didn’t know where she was going, just that it wasn’t back.
When he opened the driver’s side door, he looked as startled as she must have been when he made his first appearance into her life. “I…I didn’t think you’d still be here.”
Gilly opened her mouth but said nothing.
His eyes cut back and forth as his mouth thinned. “Move over.”
She did, and he got in. He turned the key in the ignition and put the truck in Drive. Gilly didn’t speak; she had nothing to say to him. With her feet on the duffel bag he’d squashed onto the passenger side floor, her knees felt like they rubbed her earlobes. He pushed something across the center console at her: the latest edition of some black-and-white knockoff of the Weekly World News, not the real thing. The real thing had gone out of publication years before.
“You care if I smoke?”
She did mind; the stench of cigarettes would make her gag and choke. “No.”
He punched the lighter and held its glowing tip to the cigarette’s end. The smoke stung her eyes and throat, or maybe it was her tears. Gilly turned her face to the window.
He pulled out of the lot and back onto the highway, letting the darkness fall around them with the softness and comfort of a quilt.
3
“Roses don’t like to get their feet wet.” Gilly’s mother wears a broad-brimmed straw hat. She holds up her trowel, her hands unprotected by gloves, her fingernails dark with dirt. Her knuckles, too, grimed deep with black earth. “Look, Gillian. Pay attention.”
Gilly will never be good at growing roses. She loves the way they look and smell, but roses take too much time and attention. Roses have rules. Her mother has time to spend on pruning, fertilizing. Tending. Nurturing. But Gilly doesn’t. Gilly never has enough time.
She’s dreaming. She knows it by the way her mother smiles and strokes the velvety petals of the red rose in her hand. Her mother hasn’t smiled like that in a long time, and if she has maybe it was only ever in Gilly’s dreams. The roses all around them are real enough, or at least the memory of them is. They’d grown in wild abundance against the side of her parents’ house and along gravel paths laid out in the backyard. Red, yellow, blushing pink, tinged with peach. The only ones she sees now, though, are the red ones. Roses with names like After Midnight, Black Ice, even one called Cherry Cola. They’re all in bloom.
“Pay attention,” Gilly’s mother repeats and holds out the rose. “Roses are precious and fragile things. They take a lot of work, but it’s all worth it.”
