“Oh, God,” he prayed aloud, “please don’t let them stop me.”
Hoping to stay as invisible as possible, Nathan had chosen the left lane. Without moving his head, he glanced over at the driver to his right. Even in the darkness of night, that driver was fully recognizable. Blond hair and mustache, maybe twenty-three years old, with a mole on his left temple.
If I can see him, they can see me, Nathan thought. He felt his heart gain speed, and he gripped the steering wheel hard enough to make his fingers go numb. “Stay in control;’ he told himself again, out loud, for perhaps the hundredth time that day. “Sometimes the best place to hide is out in the open.”
He felt like he was living out his only recurring nightmare, where he was naked in school and everyone was laughing, but there was nothing he could do to cover up. People were all around him, any one of whom could end his flight with a single word, but none of them were looking yet. Up ahead, the very people he feared most were planning to shine a flashlight in his face and throw him back in jail. All day long, he’d carefully planned this night, but he hadn’t allowed for the scenario unfolding in front of him. Like the house alarm and the call tracing, he’d figured that it was useless to worry about such things that he couldn’t change. If only he’d known.
In Nathan’s lane, twenty-three cars and two motorcycles stood between him and the roadblock. Six cars were let through without being checked, leaving seventeen in front of him. His hands were moist with sweat now, and his legs were shaking so badly that he was concerned whether he was going to be able to control the car.
Please, oh, please God, he prayed, silently now so as not to attract attention. Please let me get by them. Please don’t stop me now. I’ll be good, I swear I will. I’m sorry for every bad thing I’ve ever done. Please let me get through.
Tears tried to well up in his eyes, but he willed them away. Whatever happened, it was going to happen quickly, and there would be no time for that kind of emotion. In the next round, the cop let only three cars through before he searched the fourth. After that, he let five through. There seemed to be no pattern; he just stopped cars at random. If it didn’t end soon, Nathan thought, his heart would explode right out of his chest. Wouldn’t that just startle the living daylights out of the policemen?
There were only eight cars ahead of him now, and the cop let thiee go unnoticed. Next time, only two.
Oh, shit, I’m the third car now, he thought, feeling himself on the edge of panic. He’s been stopping number threes. Oh, God, please!
To Nathan’s horror, the cop stopped the very next car. Nobody got through on that round. Desperate, he tried to plan his way out if they caught him. None of them were in their cars, he thought. If they made eye contact, he’d just stomp on the gas and take his chances. It. was the only choice he had.
Once the cop was done with the car, he waved that driver on with a smile. And stopped the very next car!
“Oh, shit!” This time he said it out loud, a whisper. In the green light of the instrument panel, he could actually see his right leg shaking now as it tried to maintain even pressure on the brake pedal. He tried to swallow, but his mouth felt as if he’d been eating chalk.
The officer seemed particularly interested in the vehicle in front of Nathan, spending a long time shining the light carefully around the interior of the back seat, and then talking for a good thirty seconds with the driver. Nathan couldn’t hear the words—he couldn’t hear anything but the drumbeat of blood in his ears—but the conversation seemed to be heating up. The cop opened the driver’s door and motioned for him to step out, motioning for his partner in the other lane to come over and help. Obediently, the driver of the car stepped out and placed his hands on the roof of the car.
As the cop reached for his handcuffs with one hand, he motioned with the other for Nathan to drive around. There was some very brief eye contact, and Nathan thought for an instant that he was busted. But whatever recognition there may have been on the part of the cop quickly evaporated when his prisoner started to struggle, and they both tumbled to the ground. Nathan watched the brawl for a moment in his sideview mirror, and nearly rear-ended the car in front of him in the process.
It took a couple of miles of driving for Nathan to realize that he’d made it. After the roadblock, the traffic thinned out, moving at posted speeds or better. Nathan cruised into the right-hand lane. A green-and-white sign announced that Route 66 was just three miles away. He felt nearly dizzy with a sense of pride and accomplishment. He’d beaten them again. With each passing hash mark on the road, Nathan sped closer to his freedom, and further away from the nightmare that his life in Brookfield had become. Before him lay his future, where his past didn’t have to matter. He could start over, and somehow pretend that Uncle Mark and Ricky and judges and death itself had never entered his life and so abruptly shut down his childhood.
The windows were up, the radio was blaring, and the air conditioning was turned on high. He was free, and he planned to stay that way. As a sense of pure triumph washed over him, he threw his fist into the roof liner and shouted at the top of his voice, “Yes!”
When Monique Michaels rolled over to spoon up with her husband, she noticed he was gone, and she was instantly wide awake. The digital clock on her nightstand read 3:21, while the one on his read 3:28 and the VCR across the room flashed its perpetual 12:00.
Leaning up on her elbow, she listened for sounds, but the house was silent. She was worried about Warren. He wasn’t himself tonight. Even the sex was a little off. He did his part well enough, but half his mind was somewhere else.
It was happening again, she knew. He was shutting them out. Something was chewing up her husband’s insides, and rather than sharing it with her, or leaning on her for support, he was falling back into his macho, suffer-in-silence bravado.
Before she could control it, old anger bubbled up again from deep within. It had been nine months since their son, Brian, had been killed on his newspaper route, but only two since Warren had started to deal with it. In between, Monique and the girls had been stranded alone, left to deal with unspeakable grief in virtual silence.
Monique thought—she prayed—that they’d worked through it all. Through counseling that Warren had fought every step of the way, Monique was finally given the freedom to grieve openly. Freed from the shackles of the make-believe strength she showed to the girls, her emotions had flooded out of her, raw and bitter in their purity. Week after week, the anger and grief and bitterness spilled out to the therapist.
Yet, week after week, Warren just sat stoically, clearly in control and clearly concerned for his bride. He held her hand; he spoke sympathetic words; yet he never shed a single tear where she could see. God, how she’d hated him for that!
In the end, as the counseling diminished from three sessions a week to two sessions a month, her anger subsided just enough to let the love return. And Warren was still there. Still stoic. Still strong. Still kind.
But the pain remained as an open wound.
Slipping on the summer-weight robe with the big flowers—the one Warren hated so much, making it fun to wear—she swung out of bed and left to find him. On the way out, she habitually checked on the girls, who were sound asleep.
Normally, when Warren couldn’t sleep, he simply went downstairs to watch TV until he faded off, but tonight he wasn’t there, either. “Warren?” she asked the house softly. “Where are you?” No answer. Now she was really concerned.
Then she saw movement on the front porch, and noticed the door was ajar.
“What’s wrong, honey?” she asked as she glided silently out onto the porch to join him.
Warren greeted his bride of nearly fifteen years with a smile. He was sitting in one of the wooden rockers, holding three fingers of Scotch in a glass, wearing a T-shirt and sweat pants, with his bare feet crossed on the porch rail. “Hi, babe:’ he said. “Kids okay?”
Monique sat down in the rocker next to his. “They’re fine,” she said. “Out cold. You’re the one I’m worried about.”
“I’m fine,” he assured her. “I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”
He was anything but fine, and Monique could tell. “Like what?” she probed.
“Work stuff.”
“What kind of work stuff?”
“Stuff stuff,” he insisted, trying to blow her off. “Really. It’s nothing for you to be concerned about. Why don’t you go on back to bed? I just need to work through some things.”
“Warren, look at you.” It was the same tone she used to scold the kids. “You never sit on the front porch,
