In her room, some light from the porch leaks through the blinds. He pauses a moment over the crib. The baby is on his back in his sleep suit, arms flung wide, breath nearly inaudible. Connor sleeps through the night now, and for half a second Amadeo considers leaving him.
Instead he takes up the baby, holding him with deliberate gentleness. He grabs the blanket, too, and the car seat, which Ryan left by the door. It’s freezing outside, Amadeo’s breath white and thick as he makes his way to the truck. He opens the door, sets the car seat in the back under the dome light, sets Connor, who rubs his closed eyes with his fists, in the car seat. And as he does, one hand under the baby’s bottom, he feels the firm warm weight of the diaper, which means it probably ought to have been changed an hour ago. He should bring the diaper bag.
See? He’s remembering things, thinking things through. He jogs back to the house, searches for the diaper bag with mounting anxiety—hurry, hurry, picturing Angel standing on the street, Angel approached by strange men—before he sees it by the door where Ryan left it. He rifles in the bag to check for fresh diapers, swings it over his shoulder, and at the last minute he grabs the binky off the table, congratulating himself.
On the way back to the truck, he drops the binky, feels for it, plucks it up and pops it into his mouth to clean the grit off, spits.
In the car, Connor is awake now, staring up at the dome light. He turns wide eyes on his grandfather, starts babbling, then fussing. Amadeo pushes the binky past his lips, fumbles the straps of the car seat, and snaps him in. Connor begins sucking industriously, returning his attention to the light.
Door shut, dome light off. Behind the wheel, Amadeo rubs his face with both hands. His face is numb. Angel. Hands shaking, he starts the car, backs down the drive, straightens out.
He peers into the dark over the steering wheel. He’s fine, going fast, but not too fast. He knows these roads, has driven them his entire life. But something is wrong. He can’t see.
He blinks, furious. Why can’t he see the road? He thumps the wheel hard with his fist, and the shot of pain enflames his rage. Because why is he out in the middle of the night? Why has he been put in this position?
Angel is alone. He pictures a car slowing beside her, a shadowy man calling her close. Pictures that man grabbing her, pulling her into the car, the squeal of tires.
And then he thinks of Mike. Something happened there, of that he’s sure. And where was Amadeo then? In a burst, Amadeo accelerates, the dark pi?on flying by, the road lit by the sharp-cornered moon.
All at once he realizes he hasn’t turned on his headlights. He snaps them on, and there, stock-still in the middle of the road, eyes blazing, is the coyote.
WHEN AMADEO COMES TO, there is no moment of confusion, no where-am-I-what-happened described by people on the news after accidents, no benevolent derangement of time and place. Amadeo lies with his cheek pressed into the cold asphalt, his eyes squeezed shut.
All his anger has fled, the anger that gives him focus and shape and power, leaving him with bottomless, hollow horror. Just this clarity: There is nothing left for him on this earth. Whether he lives or dies, his life has ended on this road.
He keeps his eyes shut, prolonging this moment between his old life that was filled—filled, he understands now—with light and love and family, and the new life that will begin when he sees his grandson’s motionless, bloodied body. Because he knows, even without looking, that as assiduously as he strapped Connor into his seat, snapping each little clasp with fingers thick with liquor, he hadn’t buckled the car seat itself into the truck.
That this child should die—this child who was unplanned and unwanted, dreaded and bemoaned, and now loved, loved so deeply by all of them—is cruel. Connor, with his effortful grunts of concentration, Connor, with his abrupt, joyous laugh, Connor, turning the junk mail delicately in his hands. No child has ever been as needed, as necessary and beloved, and tears leak onto the asphalt.
Amadeo prays to die, and he’s never prayed so vehemently in his life. Take me, take me, take me. But nothing even hurts. Finally, he can put it off no longer. Amadeo opens his eyes onto a scene of peace, a night as still and bright as that first Christmas.