She drove down the empty highway with the window rolled down, the radio off, only the angry wind and the stars scattered above to keep her company. After they had returned to the house from the barn, and she had had a chance to dust off the wet grass from yet another fall in front of Cam's father, she had felt an overwhelming need to leave. Kyle's words echoed in her ears, whispering, she felt, a warning, a threat even, and she wondered if the entire evening had been invented by him as a way to put her in her place in regard to his son. She knew she could be paranoid, especially when depression and anxiety both wrestled inside her, but she couldn't shake the memory of what he had said about Cam's sister. More than what he had said, the hard, unforgiving anger in his voice.

"Thank you so much for a really nice evening," she said as she sat on the living room couch and hurriedly pulled on her sandals. She had borrowed a pair of enormous men's flip flops to walk out back, and now her feet were wet and smeared with bits of dirt and hay. Kyle was standing by the fireplace, his hands in his jeans pockets, an inscrutable look on his face. The photo of Cam and his sister peeked over his shoulder. She found herself longing to look one more time at that photo, as though to say goodbye to this boy and his lost sister, but no way she was going to do that with the boy's protective father hovering about.

After standing up and grabbing her purse from a nearby chair she made a beeline for the front door. Kyle had stepped toward her and put a hand on her arm, but she surprised herself by angrily shaking it off and then slamming the door behind her before she could hear or see his response. She climbed into her car and hurriedly started it up and drove down the long, unpaved driveway, anxious to be gone and on her way. She burned with anger and shame, anger at both Kyle and at herself, and shame from her sudden outburst as well as her feeling of having been snookered. She wished she had a friend to speed dial on speakerphone and hash over what had just happened, like they did on TV shows and movies to keep the plot moving along.

Question number one for her imaginary best friend: Had Kyle orchestrated the entire evening, or was she being delusional? Was he an authoritarian, manipulative asshole, or had she fallen so deeply down the rabbit hole of isolation—and, well, if not obsession, then preoccupation with the Walker men and their intentions—that she had lost touch with reality?

Then again, if Kyle was intent on warning her off his son, he was certainly right to do so. She shuddered to think of Cam, strong, confident Cam, finding his sister hanging from a rope—where? In their house no doubt. And then pulling her down and trying to resuscitate her, the terror and helplessness he must have felt. She tried to imagine finding her own sister in such a state, and almost burst out in weird, inappropriate laughter at the idea: if anyone was going to hang themselves, it would have been her, not her practical, remorseless sister.

He was right though, Cam's father: no kid should ever experience such a thing. And if his goal had been to warn her off him, he had succeeded. No way she was sinking any further into this morass of questionable motives and morality. It wasn't like she didn't already have enough on her plate as it was.

Like her mother.

All at once the wind hurtling through her open window blew away her lingering thoughts about the Walker men, and she was left with the naked necessity of going home and booking a flight to Newark as quickly as possible. She had wasted so much time already; her sister had made clear during the phone call that afternoon that their mother "could croak any moment, just so you know." Leave it to Christie to make her point so elegantly.

"And even if she doesn't," her sister had added, a steely edge to her voice, "you can bet your ass we are going to need to figure out some kind of longtime care solution."

She heard the frantic hum of her car's four cylinder engine and glanced at the odometer: 110 mph! She pressed down on the brake, startled by how fast she had been going. The endless roads encouraged mindless speeding, especially at night when a car's murky high beams might be the only visible source of light. Nothing wrong with speeding past the darkness to escape it.

Except the darkness, and the stars it carried along with it, was exactly what she craved. She slowed to a crawl and pulled over to the road's shoulder, careful to check her mirrors that no car lights were hurrying up from behind. As if anyone would be out here past 11 o'clock at night. You didn't see people out and about past eight most weeknights, never mind this late. As she switched her car off and waited for the silence to absorb the last ticks and rumblings of its cooling engine she imagined people like Madysen's parents, her other students' parents, curled up in bed at home, or on their sofas, leafing through hunting catalogs and discussing the sad, crazy antics of the high school English teacher from up North.

If only they could see her now, on her way home from a one night stand with the disapproving father of one of her students, still nursing the aftereffects of a day old hangover, and pulled over onto the side of an empty country road, all while avoiding the necessary filial task of buying a plane ticket to the bedside of her dying mother. Then they would really have a reason to put down the latest issue of Guns and Ammo and discuss.

She climbed out of her car and slammed the door as hard as she could, relishing the opportunity to release some of the anger and frustration that had been boiling inside her for some time now this week. Or was it just this week? Perhaps the events of the past four days had merely been a breaking point, one that had been a long time coming. It would be a year ago this July that she had first answered the job ad for a high school English teacher in some random town in Texas she had never heard of. She hadn't even known where it was on the map until it was time to book a flight for her final interview. It had all happened so quickly: one day she was home from the hospital, uncommunicative with her fiance, in a state of shock; three months later she was moving into her sister's house, walking away from her relationship under the pretense of needing to "be there" for her sister and mother.

What a fat lie that was. Not that anyone had believed her anyway. She couldn't bear the sad, questioning looks of her fiance any longer, the unanswered questions hanging in the air between them. He wanted things from her she would never be able to provide, and losing the baby made painfully clear—to her at least—her inability to love him the way she should.

So she ran. First to her sister's house, where she was confronted with a mother who was no longer present and a sister who simmered with resentment. So she ran again, quitting her teaching job in New Jersey and relocating to a place so remote that it didn't even show up on most maps. A place where no one knew her and no one expected anything of her, where aside from her selfish tutoring sessions with Madysen she remained completely aloof from the world around her, clocking in to her role as English teacher every morning, clocking out every afternoon to return home and either zone out to online TV binge sessions or pass out early with the help of a sleeping pill or two. It had been easy enough to avoid people in her new home: no one seemed to quite know what to do with her, and for the most part the other teachers left her alone and the parents maintained a respectful distance, a dynamic that was distinctly different than the high stakes helicopter parenting of the northern New Jersey high school where she had taught previously. She wasn't sure if it was because people here still retained a quaint respect for teachers, or because they didn't care that much how their kids did academically, since most of them were slated either for the military, work, or at best community college at the local agricultural extension school after graduation.

In fact, up until the past week, the full extent of her socializing had consisted of teaching, sitting quietly through staff meetings, showing up for a smattering of parent/teacher conferences, and dealing with Melvin.

The thought of Melvin made her shudder, bringing her back to the present moment. She was sitting hunched over on the hood of her car, once again ignoring the beauty of the night sky. She leaned back so that she was lying flat now, and she gazed up appreciatively at the full, dizzying array of the stars and planets unfurled above her. First she picked out the bright, steady light of a planet, and tried to guess which one it could be. Northern hemisphere, early summer, it was probably Saturn; if she had her old telescope she would be able to observe in awe the eerie stillness of its rings. She sought out the familiar constellations—the two Ursas, Libra and Sagittarius, and between them Scorpius, the killer of prideful, murderous Orion and raised to the heavens by Zeus himself in gratitude for its deed. She felt a sense of peace as the old stories mingled in her mind with the shimmering of the stars and the rustling of a gentle wind that snaked around her on its journey across the flatlands of the night.

Her phone rang and she jumped in surprise. She rolled off the car hood with a groan of irritation and scrambled to pull it from her purse on the passenger seat. A local number. Nope, no way she was answering that, and she put it to voicemail. There was literally no one with a local phone number who she wanted to talk to right now. Absolutely no one. Nevertheless, it was a wake up call. It was well past midnight, and she had much to do yet before the night was over. No more star gazing for her, and no more ruminating.

She sighed heavily and got ready to go. Only, when she went to turn the key, the engine made some coughing noises, whirred a bit, and then nothing. She tried again and this time almost nothing happened, until finally she was greeted with silence every time she turned the key.

"Are you kidding me?" she said out loud to no one. The stars listened above, impassive to her plight. "Are you freaking kidding me?"

She shoved opened the door, got out and began kicking the side of her car.

"You stupid piece of shit!" she shouted. "You stupid, useless piece of crap!"

She was about to start punching the car with a clenched fist when she stopped herself, realizing not only the futility of such a gesture but also the damage it would probably do to her. She knew she was having some kind of rage- and anxiety-fueled meltdown, and though it was nice not to be breaking down into tears for once, it wasn't going to change her situation.

"Godammit," she grumbled. She desperately flipped through a mental roladex, and only one name surfaced as a possibility. So she sent a text.

"My car broke down. Stuck in the middle of nowhere."

Then she kicked her car one more time and yelped in pain since she was, after all, only wearing sandals. 

https://youtu.be/fPHuQFN7L70