But she liked this.
Liked sitting on Tucker’s lap at the kitchen table and listening to the crackle of chicken being fried on the stove. The groan of a window being opened, breeze meandering in and carrying out the smell of cooking. Static threading in through music on the radio. The dueling baritones of male voices, split by the occasional rumble of laughter. Human stuff.
There was fulfilment in the lack of action. The feeling that they were all in the exact right place, because they were in one another’s company. What could be better? Her decision to stay with Tucker came part and parcel with a lot of guilt…but the realization that she’d never been truly happy until now made her wonder why. If her father truly left her and Tilda behind because of her blindness, should the fault be Mary’s? Or should the fault be his lack of compassion and responsibility?
She couldn’t help but compare Carl to her own father. Would this man who’d been searching for his wife in the cosmos for decades desert his own wife and child?
No. She couldn’t imagine it.
She could imagine staying here, though. Or somewhere like this.
Just being content with the passage of time. With happiness. With the good and bad that came with a normal life. She suddenly wanted that—a place to belong—so badly she could taste it on the tip of her tongue. Like a bottomless milkshake.
“There is nothing for you to hit, so just enjoy yourself, okay?” Tucker’s hand coasted down the back of her hair, brushing a thumb down the back of her neck.
“Okay.” Mary’s fingers flexed on the steering wheel. “Let me know when I’ve hit a hundred miles per hour.”
Tucker’s leather seat creaked. “Whoa whoa—”
“Only kidding.” She grinned at him. “Lighten up, Dad.”
A hoot came from the backseat. “My my, how the tables have turned.”
“That’s about enough out of you, old man,” Tucker called back, but there was a definite smile in his voice. “Besides, if I recall correctly, it was Mom who had to deal with my constant begging to test drive her station wagon. She finally gave in when I was…”
Tucker’s voice trailed off and he was silent for so long that Mary reached over, tracing his facial features with the pads of her fingers. “When you were what?”
He cleared his throat. “It’s the oddest thing,” he said quietly. “I forgot all about this memory until right now, but this is how she taught me. Just like this, in the open field. Only, this is back when we had the cows. And I just remember…one of them ran in front of the station wagon my very first time driving. I didn’t see it coming. I slammed on the brakes.” Silence ticked by. “One second the cow was there, the next…we were on the other side of the field and Mom was telling me to turn the car around. I asked her about the cow and she had no idea what I was talking about. Why am I only remembering this now?”
“You’re in a similar situation,” Mary said. “Maybe it shook the memory loose.”
Carl shifted in the backseat, creaking the leather.
“Yeah.” Tucker squeezed her thigh. “Yeah, that’s probably it. You ready to rock?”
Mary licked her lips, gripped the steering wheel until it creaked. “Ready!”
“All right, honey, just ease down on the gas pedal. It’s okay if it leaps forward a little. This thing is a hungry beast and we don’t try to tame it, will we? Just remember to keep the wheel straight.”
“Got it.” Mary blew out a breath and sat up straighter.
Tucker took her hand off the wheel and settled it on the gear shift. “Hold down the brake like I showed you. Until it’s in drive.”
Mary nodded, her pulse tripping over itself when Tucker guided the shift downward. She counted four clicks. “Should I let go of the brake now?”
“Yup. Nice and easy. The car will start to roll—good. Good, honey. Now—”
Black.
Silence.
A weightless, soundless void.
Tucker’s voice cut out and then there was nothing. None of her senses were working. There was no way to touch or call out. It was as if she’d floated free of her body into an endless blank space. She bobbed in some foreign atmosphere for an unknown amount of time, fear holding her hostage, until finally two voices reached her ears.
One belonged to her mother, another was new. A man.
Something about the sound of his voice made her heart sprint, her pulse firing on all cylinders. As the voices grew louder, she started to experience feeling in her limbs again. As if her body had been taken away, but it was now forming around her again.
Cold. She was so cold.
Shivering.
Where was Tucker?
Had she been removed from the car?
She wanted to go back. Please let me go back.
With the reanimation of her form in the darkness, there came a terrible foreboding in her stomach. Acid climbed up her esophagus and filled her mouth…