“What argument?”
“In the case you’re doing? Why is one or the other contesting the will?”
“This stuff really interests you?” he asked, sounding annoyed.
“I thought you wanted to talk to pass the time rather than listen to music or the radio,” I said.
“I changed my mind,” he said, and turned on the radio. “No one really listens to anyone anyway,” he muttered.
I was feeling more and more uncomfortable. I had made a big mistake taking a ride with him. I sat back, eager to see the lights of San Francisco, eager to get out of the darkness, for it seemed I would spend most of my life escaping from one shadow just to be overtaken by another.
And what awaited me in each was surely not pleasant.
2
The lights of a metropolitan area never seemed to be out there, no matter how far and how long we traveled. I looked at the time and realized we had been driving for well over an hour. If anything, the road looked darker, the sight of lighted house windows few and far between. I leaned forward to see if I could catch a road sign, but for miles and miles, I saw nothing.
“Are you sure this is the route to San Francisco?” I asked. A good twenty minutes had gone by without him saying a word. He had been either lost in his own thoughts or so into the music that he seemed to have forgotten I was with him.
“It’s a shortcut,” he said. After a moment, he added, “Look, I have to drop off this case of wine at my friend’s house. It’s a little off the beaten path, but I promise, it will take only ten minutes.”
I didn’t respond, but there was something in the air, a crackling that I could sense. I was reminded of the times when I was a little girl and Daddy would suddenly stop whatever he was doing and look as if he were listening keenly to something. I would try to hear whatever it was, too, but I wouldn’t hear anything. He was always so still, his eyes so fixed on whatever he thought he could see out there. I would look out into the darkness, narrowing my eyelids the way he did and concentrating, but I never saw anything. Suddenly, he would get up.
“What’s wrong, Daddy?” I would ask.
“Nothing. Just continue your reading,” he would say, and he would go outside. I would go to the window and look for him. I thought I saw him moving in the shadows, and then, as if the shadows stuck to him or he wrapped them around himself, he would grow into something larger and darker. Sometimes he was out there for only a few minutes, and sometimes he wouldn’t return for hours. Occasionally, I would have to go to bed before he returned, and Mrs. Fennel would always promise that she would tell him I was waiting up for him. He would come to my bedroom to be sure I was all right.
“What was out there, Daddy?” I would ask.
“Nothing you should fear,” he would always say. “Never be afraid of the darkness itself. Darkness is our best friend. The shadows protect us. Don’t fear them.”
“I don’t.”
“That’s my girl,” he would tell me, and he would kiss me on the cheek. Then he would fix my blanket and brush my hair. I would close my eyes and feel so safe and warm that nothing I could imagine would frighten me.
I wasn’t exactly frightened in the car with Keith. It was more like being cautious, prepared, triggering my personal homeland security system. All of my senses had been placed on high alert, heightened. I could feel my body tighten even more, the muscles in my arms and legs grow hard.
The road he had turned onto was bumpy and soon became more like a gravel driveway.
“Where does this friend live?”
“Not far now,” he said.
I looked for some sign of life, some light, something besides the trees and the distant mountains that now looked like smudges against the horizon, as if they had all been finger-painted on a grayish-black canvas by a young god who had not yet formed his vision of the world he wanted to create.
Suddenly, Keith stopped the car.
“Why are you stopping? What’s wrong?” I asked, my fingers folding tightly into fists.
“Don’t like the sounds coming from the rear of the vehicle. I’ll just check a moment,” he said, and got out. I watched him walk to the back of the SUV and open the door. “Can you push the wine case more toward me?” he asked.
“Why?”
“Just do it,” he ordered. “I think it has to do with the noise.”
I hesitated, then turned and leaned over the seat and reached back to push the case. When I did so, he lunged forward and grasped both of my wrists. I was too shocked to speak for a moment. He pulled me farther forward, and then I saw a set of handcuffs, one on each side of the SUV, each clipped to a hook. He wanted to put the handcuffs around my wrists and lock them. The realization of what that would mean shot through me like an electric spasm. My body recoiled, and when it did, I turned my hands, broke his grip on me, and seized his wrists.
My strength surprised and shocked him. For a few seconds, I just looked up at him. Whatever he saw in my face terrified him. He cried out like some desperate small animal that could see its life evacuating its body, fleeing in panic. I tugged him so hard and so quickly that he came flying forward over me and the front seats, smashing his head on the dashboard. I heard him groan and fall over onto his side against the driver’s door.