The Best American Mystery Stories 2014 by Laura Lippman, Otto Penzler Page B
Authors: Laura Lippman, Otto Penzler
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stars absorbed by the night. Charlotte signaled as she left the parking lot, though there wasn’t reason to, and then we were swallowed by the fields on both sides of the road, the staggered fence posts. Even though I had been walking in the dark, I did not realize the immensity of it until it had become a throat hold around us, and the broken yellow line was lost beyond the one good headlight.
After the accident I would wonder if I had seen it coming, the shift in shadows, the sudden definition of a shape, a thickening in the air like a premonition, because when something goes terribly wrong there is always a before and always an after, but the moment itself is vague and hard to gather, and time jumps like a skip in a record, and so I tried to remember the before, tried to trace what happened during, but in the end it all came down to after and we were spun hood up into a dry drainage ditch, the broken headlight suddenly finding its too little too late and pointing straight and strong at nothing more than wide-open sky, the windshield shattered and fracturing the night into a thousand webbed pieces, and Charlotte bleeding from her nose and me with my mouth open to say something, but instead everything just hung quiet and still.
“What did we hit?” Charlotte asked, and she rubbed the back of her hand under her nose and the blood smeared across it, and in the weak light the blood was more black than red. I thought about what Lenny Richter had said,
nothing but corn syrup and food coloring
.
“We didn’t hit anything,” I said. “Did we?”
“I saw it,” she said. “I just couldn’t stop.”
The engine was still on, the radio picking up the end of Kiss doing “Christine Sixteen,” and I turned around in my seat and looked out the back window at the rise of ditch behind us, tall grass and weeds pressed against the bumper. I realized the car was still in drive, and Charlotte’s foot was on the brake, because the slope of ground was lit bright and red.
“Turn off the car,” I said.
It took her a moment to cut the engine, and then there was a different quiet, with only the headlights telling us nothing except that we were off the road and looking at the stars. I opened my door and I could smell the grass torn up where the back end had swung around when we spun, and there was the sharp burn of fresh rubber on asphalt hanging in the air, but I could not remember Charlotte hitting the brakes at all. The wind had died down, or we were far enough in the ditch to be out of the gust, and I could hear crickets, a million of them in all directions around us, and the sound of something on the road just over the soft shoulder above where I stood, something ticking out of sync with the noise of the engine cooling, something struggling to get its legs under it, something trying hard to get up and walk.
I heard Charlotte’s door open, and the angle of the ditch forced her to put her weight into it so she could swing it wide enough to get free, and then she was walking up the short incline toward the road, and I stood there watching her, listening to the crickets, and trying to make sense out of the sound.
“Son of a bitch,” she said. And there was a sadness in her voice that made me want to get back into the car and shut my door and slide onto the floor, let Charlotte deal with it and wait it out, because Charlotte was older and had always been the one to take the brunt, but I wouldn’t do that this time. I was the one who had called her out here. She came for me.
My eyes adjusted to the dark, which had settled and thinned on the road. Even the smallest detail was defined and clear—the broken asphalt where shoulder met road, the yellow center line, the metal fence posts set back on both sides, leaning and loose with rusted wires marking acres. Behind me the wide, shallow ditch ran along the roadside, full of nothing more than dense grass gone to seed, trash, and my father’s Dodge Royal Monaco, nose up and
After the accident I would wonder if I had seen it coming, the shift in shadows, the sudden definition of a shape, a thickening in the air like a premonition, because when something goes terribly wrong there is always a before and always an after, but the moment itself is vague and hard to gather, and time jumps like a skip in a record, and so I tried to remember the before, tried to trace what happened during, but in the end it all came down to after and we were spun hood up into a dry drainage ditch, the broken headlight suddenly finding its too little too late and pointing straight and strong at nothing more than wide-open sky, the windshield shattered and fracturing the night into a thousand webbed pieces, and Charlotte bleeding from her nose and me with my mouth open to say something, but instead everything just hung quiet and still.
“What did we hit?” Charlotte asked, and she rubbed the back of her hand under her nose and the blood smeared across it, and in the weak light the blood was more black than red. I thought about what Lenny Richter had said,
nothing but corn syrup and food coloring
.
“We didn’t hit anything,” I said. “Did we?”
“I saw it,” she said. “I just couldn’t stop.”
The engine was still on, the radio picking up the end of Kiss doing “Christine Sixteen,” and I turned around in my seat and looked out the back window at the rise of ditch behind us, tall grass and weeds pressed against the bumper. I realized the car was still in drive, and Charlotte’s foot was on the brake, because the slope of ground was lit bright and red.
“Turn off the car,” I said.
It took her a moment to cut the engine, and then there was a different quiet, with only the headlights telling us nothing except that we were off the road and looking at the stars. I opened my door and I could smell the grass torn up where the back end had swung around when we spun, and there was the sharp burn of fresh rubber on asphalt hanging in the air, but I could not remember Charlotte hitting the brakes at all. The wind had died down, or we were far enough in the ditch to be out of the gust, and I could hear crickets, a million of them in all directions around us, and the sound of something on the road just over the soft shoulder above where I stood, something ticking out of sync with the noise of the engine cooling, something struggling to get its legs under it, something trying hard to get up and walk.
I heard Charlotte’s door open, and the angle of the ditch forced her to put her weight into it so she could swing it wide enough to get free, and then she was walking up the short incline toward the road, and I stood there watching her, listening to the crickets, and trying to make sense out of the sound.
“Son of a bitch,” she said. And there was a sadness in her voice that made me want to get back into the car and shut my door and slide onto the floor, let Charlotte deal with it and wait it out, because Charlotte was older and had always been the one to take the brunt, but I wouldn’t do that this time. I was the one who had called her out here. She came for me.
My eyes adjusted to the dark, which had settled and thinned on the road. Even the smallest detail was defined and clear—the broken asphalt where shoulder met road, the yellow center line, the metal fence posts set back on both sides, leaning and loose with rusted wires marking acres. Behind me the wide, shallow ditch ran along the roadside, full of nothing more than dense grass gone to seed, trash, and my father’s Dodge Royal Monaco, nose up and
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