A gum-popping teenage clerk rung up Annie’s purchase. “That’s eight forty-two.”
Annie reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a twenty dollar bill. As she did this, she accidentally dragged out a big clump of change along with it. The coins scattered all over the floor. Before she had left the apartment, she had gathered up all the loose change she could find and filled her pockets with it.
Annie felt stupid and clumsy. She handed the girl the twenty and squatted down to the floor to pick up all the money. The little boy behind her in line dropped to his knees to help her.
When Annie finally stood up, the clerk was waiting with her change from the twenty, looking annoyed.
“Sorry about that,” Annie said, taking the change and stuffing it in her jeans. She glanced back out the front window.
Natasha was gone.
It took a moment for this information to register in Annie’s brain. Then, she realized that it wasn’t just Natasha that was missing—the whole
For a half-second, Annie was completely frozen, unable to come to grips with the data that was being fed from her eyeballs to her visual cortex, thinking that maybe she was looking out the wrong window or that her eyes were playing tricks on her. But it was the same window she had just looked out a moment earlier, and her eyes were just fine.
Her child—her
“
After a few strides, she could see her car. It was backing out of the parking space. No, it wasn’t backing out, it was
“Oh my God!” she gasped, as she burst through the front door. She could still see the silhouette of Natasha’s head against the car’s rear window. The front wheels weren’t straight, so the car was rolling at an angle, picking up speed, headed towards the street.
In a split second, Annie estimated the trajectory and knew there was a good chance the car would make it out of the entrance to the parking lot and into the heavy rush hour traffic. She shot like a bullet across the pavement, fueled by blind protective maternal energy, towards the right side of the runaway vehicle. She would throw the door open, jump inside, and jam her foot on the emergency brake (
During the next few seconds, the world seemed to slow down like a frame-by-frame sports replay. Each moment infinitely short and infinitely long at the same time. There seemed to be minutes, hours, even days to reflect on her whole life—her childhood, her high school days, her first period, her first job, her pregnancy, the endless fights with Neal about having an abortion, even Neal’s paranoia about Natasha during the past few days. Yet, during those fleeting flashbacks, the car seemed to be inevitably hurtling towards the traffic.
As she streaked across the parking lot, she was unaware of any physical sensations. She had one and only one goal: to save the life of her child. Every cell in her body was relegated to accomplishing it, as if her body was on some kind of automatic pilot, with no conscious direction on her part.
But after sprinting full-speed for few more seconds, she began to slow down. At first it was only a slight hesitation, but after two or more of her long, frantic strides, she made a decision to change her course. The front end of her car was swinging around towards a pickup truck that was parked near the entrance to the street. The front of her car would make solid contact with the back of the pickup truck. And if Annie didn’t alter her course appreciably, she would be caught between the two vehicles on impact.
But her motherly instincts overtook her reason. She continued on her previous course, resuming maximum speed. After two more strides, she had caught up with the front bumper of her own car; after another stride, she was in between her car and the truck, with the front end of her car approaching fast.
Now there was only a couple of feet between the two vehicles.
Annie’s hand flew out towards the handle of
