Headlights(106)

“Calvin,” I say, his name feeling like poison in my mouth. “Tell me why.” The last word comes out shaky and desperate, and I don’t care.

Why did you take my mom from me? Why did you take my life away? Even if it was to lead to family, even if I’d end up getting everything …

Why did you rip her from me?

He sniffs, wipes his face again and presses his fingers to his brow. He is miserable. It’s not an act, not for sympathy. He is truly, deeply, profoundly unhappy.

“Why?” I say again.

“That book. The one she always carried around. The Stephen King one. You ever pick that up?”

The hotel room we stayed in last night. That book on the shelf I could have taken, and didn’t. I don’t say anything.

“She wrote in there, you know. Little notes. All kinds of things, for years. She ripped a page out of the back and wrote me a letter on it. I think she thought it was gonna get to me after.”

“After we left.”

He looks at me, and I can’t read his expression at all. “You should read it, one day. When you’re ready. Not the letter, I don’t know where that is now. But you should read the book.”

“You’re saying you read her letter saying we were going to leave, and you came to the hotel, and—”

“I didn’t mean to kill her,” he says. He sniffs, rubs at his eyes. “Maybe I did. I don’t know what I meant to do, I was just so scared, and I couldn’t lose you both. I couldn’t … after she took you to Aspen.… You have no idea how much it hurt, the idea of that.”

“Yeah,” I say. “You’re right. I don’t know anything about hurt.”

After a second, he stops crying, and he takes me in again.

“You turned out strong,” he says. “Thank you for coming here. It’s a gift. I think … seein’ you. I think I mighta done something right in this life. I think I mighta done okay.”





3



Hannah and I are in the Stanley SUV in the Sterling Correctional Facility parking lot. I don’t know where we’re going to go, if it’s back to Aspen to regroup or somewhere new. I just … I need to drive. I need to think.

I talked to my dad. It didn’t do anything, didn’t give us anything new. Nothing to help us get out of this mess. Of course not. Calvin Keller being useful in any way, the idea of him possibly helping me …

I start the car.

WHOOSH!

A hawk shoots out the sky, dive-bombs a smaller bird right in front of our windshield. I see it, as if in slow motion. As the hawk hits the smaller bird with its talons first and then its beak. The hawk breaks the smaller bird’s spine in the air.

The small bird drops to the hood of our car with a thunk.

The hawk caws loudly, hovers. Then flies away.

Static. On the radio.

“What the fuck was that?” I ask, staring at the dead animal on the hood. I almost can’t speak. Calvin Keller. Dad. Dad in front of me. I’m still shaking, probably. I’m— “He must live here,” Hannah says. “The hawk. The magpie probably just moved in. A hawk will do anything to defend its territory.”

I look at the small unmoving creature on the other side of the windshield.

“Nature can be brutal,” Hannah says quietly, sadness in her voice.

I get out and look in the trunk for some work gloves. There aren’t any, but there’s an old newspaper. I slide it under the bird as carefully as I can in the snow, telling it I’m sorry. I walk to the trash can and can’t bring myself to do it. I take it over to a tree instead, dodging a few ghosts on the way, people, lingering. Watching.

I lay the bird down in the snow beneath the tree. My dad’s face in my vision. My dad’s voice in my ears. I slide the newspaper out from beneath the little bird. This small body. A life so quickly taken, so carelessly. I leave the bird in the snow and stand to throw away the newspaper, step over to a trash can.

I turn back to the Stanley SUV, but out of the corner of my eye, I see wings flapping. Glowing but shadowed. Rising up to the sky from beneath the tree, soaring up over the car.

Calvin Keller in jail, and me standing out here. The ghost bird flapping its wings.

And if I didn’t know any better, I’d say it looked an awful lot like that magpie in the snow. I stand there for a minute, and I watch it fly away.



* * *



I step back through the snow to the car, something nagging. A thought, something Hannah said. A hawk will do anything to defend its territory.

“Hey,” I say. “Hannah, did you—”

I stop in my tracks. Because when I see her, when I come around the side of the car …

Hannah is cuffed again. Standing outside the passenger door.

Tillman is beside her.

Tillman, who’s pointing a gun straight at me.

“All right, guy,” he says. “We do this the easy way or hard way, but you’re both comin’ with me.”





4



Hannah and I are cuffed in the back seat of Tillman’s car—her wrists in front of her, mine behind my back—with the child locks on and a paranormal podcast playing. Tillman also cuffed my ankles. Just in case you decide to try and break anything else on my face, he said. His nose is bruised and bandaged.