Page 36 of Plain Sight

Moral dilemmas everywhere.

Except not really. The driving force of all living creatures is to survive, and I am no different. I throw what I feel is the minimum number of punches. I’m not looking to enrage two drunkards—I just need to get out of the house and back to my SUV. There’s no time to ask them why their parents were financially involved with a contract killer, and the question would put them on the defensive anyway.

They want me out of the house, too, so actually we’re a united front. All of us want me to disappear into the night. In this one thing, we’re playing for the same team. We work together—them chasing, me running.

My escape, at least, is successful. And I’ve parked far enough down the street that when I start running, they figure they’ve won and shout at me in frat-boy manly tones.

I head north.

Best if I switch this car out for one with a different plate. For a crime scene, I haven’t totally fucked up my emergency preparedness plans. I have cars in different places all over the state of New York. Not just Manhattan. That would be the opposite of emergency preparedness.

In less than five minutes I’m back behind the wheel of my most nondescript SUV, heading north again in case they try to follow me or send cops after me or—who the fuck knows?—send a contract killer after me. I blend with traffic on the highway and get off two exits past the one I need so I can lose any unfriendly followers on the local roads.

Nobody seems like they’re following me.

They’d have to really want to catch me to be out past two in the morning on these, the most boring surface streets in New York.

I’m driving down a stretch of road that feels like it’s in the middle of nowhere when it really starts to feel like the middle of nowhere. Like I had to drive for fifteen years to get here, and it’s fifteen more years to the other side.

My lip throbs, and the cut on my cheeks aches in this dull, irritating way, and Jesus, I’ve been doing this for so, so long.

I’m so tired.

I could stop.

I could sleep.

That thought is a head-on collision that almost sends the SUV tumbling into the ditch. I correct at the last second, getting my ass back into the center of the lane. My mouth tastes like a battery and I can feel every individual hair on my body yanking on my skin.

I cannot sleep.

I can’t have that happen.

The only thing worse than staying awake for a week at a time, or a month at a time, or fifteen years at a time, is what I see when I’m sleeping.

I can’t have seven-year-old Remy dead in front of the couch or the silence in the air after Mason stops screaming or Gabriel with his hand pressed over a wound in his side. I can’t have one of them—all of them—any of them holding those photos in front of my face. I can’t have them looking at me like I’m the only one who can save them. I can’t. I’ve never even been able to save myself.

I land back in my body with the SUV drifting into the opposite lane, overcorrect, and finally straighten out.

It’s not safe to drive like this. Did you know? Driving this tired is like driving drunk. Or on drugs. Or both. People shouldn’t do it. I’m categorically against driving under the influence.

Out of everything I’ve done, driving like this might be the worst. The advance guilt is like a mouthful of lemon. It’s so bitter that it keeps my eyes wide open all the way to the commuter lot where I switch SUVs and start driving back to Manhattan.

Since my eyes are wide fucking open, I don’t think about milkshakes or teacups or Snowball sleeping in his cage. That is a bird who deserves to sleep. He’s never done anything wrong in his entire life.

I think about Lily in our bed for a little while.

She doesn’t know I’m gone. If I play this right, she’ll never know I was gone. I can get this under control.

I know what that sounds like. We both know what that sounds like. But we’re not going to make any comparisons, because I’m wide awake and I’m driving with the utmost care.

Maybe I should go to my cottage.

I start to exit the highway and have to force myself to stay in the lane. I’m not going to the cottage tonight, and it’s not because Lily’s grandfather or Malcolm Walsh or whoever the fuck the Good Samaritan is might’ve found it.

It’s because Lily is at Mason’s, and I need to be with her more than I need to sleep. More than anything else.

That’s enough to get me back into the city. Back into Mason’s parking garage.