My heart pounds as I start the engine of my 2002 Dodge Neon and pray that the car will not fail me tonight of all nights. It doesn’t. It roars to life and I am on the highway within a few moments, taking me further away from that place.
I step on the gas and drive faster and faster. As the road winds around the narrow highway, trees and housing developments whip by me. I don’t know what the speed limit is and I don’t know where I’m going. All I know is that I can’t go back there and I definitely can’t go home. No matter how fast I drive, my thoughts keep going back to what just happened.
His hands on me.
The sound of the gunshot.
The buzzing of my head.
Blood everywhere.
No, I can’t think about it. Not now. Not ever. Not if I want to get away. None of that matters now. Dwelling on it won’t solve anything. I need to get away from here. As far away as possible. All I see is the empty black road illuminated by my headlights and snow flurries whizzing by and colliding with the windshield.
I glance back in the rearview mirror. There’s no one there. I haven’t seen another car for miles, but it still feels like someone’s following me. Watching me. They are coming for me. I know. If not now, then soon. No one gets away with what I’ve done.
Suddenly, I realize that I’m grasping the steering wheel too tightly. My knuckles are white from holding on so hard, and it’s not just because the heating in this car barely works. I take a deep breath. I inhale slowly. In and out. It’s going to be okay, I say to myself. Everything is going to be okay. You just have to stop freaking out and think.
I glance over at the bag on the seat next to me. I touch it to make sure that it’s real. I can’t believe what I have done. What the hell was I thinking? Still, I am a little proud of myself. For once, I had enough guts and I wasn’t going to take all that shit anymore. For once, I stood up for myself. And now, everything in that bag is mine. All mine.
I take another deep breath and try to decide what I should do. All I want to do is go home and curl up in my bed with my cat. But that’s an impossibility. They know where I live.
The road curves and I turn left. It’s an unfamiliar route, but I’m pretty sure it’s the straightest way out of town. I slow down a bit since the snow is getting heavier and I can barely see more than a few feet in front of me.
Maybe this is as good a time as ever to go somewhere I’ve always wanted to go. I was born and raised in Alaska and I’ve never been out of this state. Perhaps now is the best time to make a change. Well, if I could go anywhere, I’d go somewhere warm. Somewhere where the beaches are perfectly white and the water is crystal clear. Somewhere I can wear flip-flops all year round. And, of course, it would have to be a place that I can drive to.
I lose myself for a few minutes, imagining a life that I could have in Florida. When I finally come back from my daydream, I realize that I’ve taken a wrong turn. The banks are covered entirely by snow, stacked five feet high. Pine trees tower on both sides and the road continues to narrow. What was two wide lanes only a few hundred yards ago suddenly merged into one rather narrow lane. Shit, I say to myself. This road hasn’t been maintained for days. How did I end up here?
I have to turn around. I step on the brake to slow down, but the car starts to slide. I pump the brakes, quickly and deliberately, but it’s all to no avail. The car continues to skid forward. I’ve hit ice and the brakes are useless. My heart jumps inside my throat. I grab onto the steering wheel with all of my might. I take a deep breath, breathing in and out, trying to keep my cool. I put the car in neutral. This has worked hundreds of times before, but not tonight. The ground underneath feels like an ice skating rink. I turn the wheel from side to side, but it’s doing nothing to control the direction of the car.
My headlights illuminate a large pine tree ahead.
Oh my God.
Everything fades to black.
I’m following Ava up the hill behind our house. The sun is barely up, but we’ve been awake for hours. She runs ahead, grasping her round saucer of a sled in her little hand with the endless energy of a five-year-old.
‘C’mon, Dad!’ she yells for me. I struggle up the hill, my feet sinking deep into the dry snow. This is my ninth ride down, and I doubt I have another one in me.
‘Let’s race,’ she announces at the top as if it’s something new. We have raced all the other times, and each time it was a struggle to lose. This race is not unlike the rest. I dig my heels into the side of the hill and brave the pounds of powder that hit my face, barely managing to slow down just in time before reaching the finish line.
‘You lost again!’ Ava laughs, heading back up the hill.
‘I guess I did.’ I shrug, digging out the snow, which found my neck despite the zipped-up parka and scarf.
‘I’m not sure if I can do another run, Ava,’ I yell after her.
‘Oh c’mon, please, please, Dad. Just two more,’ she yells without waiting for an answer.
I can’t help but smile. Though she doesn’t know what a lawyer is, something tells me that this might be a perfect career choice for her. Her negotiating skills are second to none. Instead of arguing for just one more run, she asks for two. This way, we can both win by settling for one.
Two runs later – I can’t say no to those big brown eyes – we come back inside. As I help her get out of her coat and boots in the mud room, she smiles at me and tells her mom how she won every single time.
‘The last time, I really thought that Dad was going to win, but then at the last moment, he slowed down,’ she says. ‘Dad, I was thinking. Maybe you should put your feet up. I looked over and saw that you have so much snow going around the sides of your sled.’
‘Yeah, maybe I’ll try that next time,’ I say with a shrug.
Emily pours us our cups of hot chocolate, shaking her head.
‘You shouldn’t let her win every time.’ Emily turns to me when Ava’s head is buried in a Minecraft video on YouTube on Emily’s phone. ‘I know your dad never let you win at anything, but that doesn’t mean that she should live in a world where she thinks she’s invincible.’
Emily and I don’t disagree on much, but we do disagree on this point. She thinks the world is a tough place and the best way to prepare Ava for it is to be tough on her. I think that the world is a tough place and the best way to prepare Ava for it is to wrap her in a cloak of confidence and self-assuredness.
‘I’m building her self-esteem,’ I say.
‘You’re making her cocky,’ Emily responds.
‘Cocky and outgoing, hopefully. There’s nothing wrong with boys being confident and outgoing, but somehow it’s a bad thing for a girl to be. Well, not my girl. Ava’s going to grow up thinking that she can be anyone she wants to be.’
‘It’s not that I don’t want that, Noah,’ Emily says with a sigh. She has always been the more realistic, grounded one. ‘It’s that I want kids at school to actually like her. I want her to fit in.’
‘You want her to be popular.’
‘So? What’s wrong with that?’
‘Nothing. But take it from me, the most popular girls are the most confident girls. They’re the ones that don’t take shit. They’re the ones that aren’t afraid to talk to guys. To state their opinions. I know. I see them walking the halls with their heads held high. I see the way all the guys fall over themselves just to talk to them.’
Emily sighs. A sign of defeat. We’ve had this conversation a million times before. We just see the world differently, and there’s no way either of us can convince the other that we’re right.
‘She’s a good girl, Ava. And we’re raising her just fine. Don’t worry so much.’
Emily flashes me an unconvincing smile and gets up for her purse and keys. Ava looks up from the phone and frowns.
‘I have to go to work, baby.’ Emily gives her a hug.
I hate to see this sad look on Ava’s face every time her mom leaves to go to work. Especially for her weekend shifts.
‘But it’s Saturday,’ Ava pleads.
Emily shrugs. ‘I have to go to work, honey. We’re short staffed at the hospital. Two nurses are sick.’
‘Why can’t you be sick?’ Ava asks, already thinking like a lawyer.
‘Because they need me there.’
‘But I need you here.’
Emily pulls on her boots, apologizing over and over.
‘But Ellie’s mom is always home. And so is Levi’s. And Logan’s.’
Emily kisses Ava on top of her head, rolling her eyes at me. Even though she will never admit it, I can feel her resenting me. We both know why Ellie’s, Levi’s, and Logan’s moms are home. Their dads aren’t tenth grade English teachers. Ellie’s dad runs a trucking company, Levi’s dad is a lawyer, and Logan’s dad owns a luxury fishing outfitter that requires him to work fifteen-hour days during the summer, taking tourists from the lower forty-eight around the best fishing spots in the state, and then lay around the house and drink beer for the other nine months.
Ellie, Levi, and Logan live down the street, in the same development as we do, but their houses, just like their fathers’ salaries, are much bigger than ours.
‘I’m really sorry.’ I walk up to Emily and give her a warm hug.
‘For what?’
‘Just that you can’t stay home with Ava like the other moms can.’
Emily shrugs.
‘I may not love working twelve-hour shifts on weekends, but I love being a nurse.’
That’s Emily’s go to line. That’s how she always explains away the long hours she works and the fact that she almost always volunteers for overtime. Back in the day, I used to believe her, but that was many years ago. Back then, I also believed that I loved being an English teacher. As if there were nothing better than going to work and coming home in pitch darkness, giving the same lectures year after year to practically the same bored students who couldn’t care less about Scout Finch or Huck Finn or Hester Prynne. As if there were nothing better than grading eighty papers at a time because the other English teacher was conveniently sick and the school didn’t have a budget for any more assistants or substitutes.
Of course, admitting any of this, even to your spouse, your best friend, the person who has been with you through thick and thin, the person you love most in the world, besides your daughter, seems impossible. Admitting this would mean that your life has been a sham. A mistake. It’s like we already have all this invested in our life, and to say that maybe it’s not what we want seems daunting to say the least.
Ava and I follow Emily to our four-car garage. Four-car garages are considered a necessity in our subdivision because they’re meant to store your two sport utility vehicles as well as an assortment of toys: an all-terrain vehicle, a boat, a motorcycle. The type of toy varies, but everyone here has at least two toys. Our two SUVs and boxes of summer clothes don’t even come close to filling up the garage, not that we have any more credit to buy anything anyway. The mortgage and the two car payments have pretty much stretched our credit to the limit.
‘Are you going to work on your book today?’ Emily asks.
‘No, Dad’s going to watch TV with me,’ Ava announces. To tell the truth, that sounds like a much better way to spend the afternoon than staring at a blank page thinking of something to write.
‘Noah?’ Emily asks.
‘I’m going to try.’
‘Please do. You’re already way behind on your schedule,’ she says, opening the door to the garage and pressing the ignition button.
The thing is, I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I’ve always loved books. That’s the main reason I majored in English in college and ended up becoming an English teacher. Naively, I thought that I would actually make an impact on the lives of the kids I teach. Unfortunately, I quickly realized that kids these days are more interested in YouTube videos, Instagram, and Facebook than in reading.
Eventually, about a year ago, I got it in my head that I could write a novel. I’ve written short stories and some poems and read about a million books on my Kindle. So, of course, I could do it, too, right? Well, that’s when the writer’s block started up. There are so many different kinds of books that someone can write and I couldn’t quite decide on one. Emily, being the practical soul that she is, of course tried to focus my attention on the books that actually make money. She read all these blogs and listened to all these podcasts about self-publishing from indie authors so she is practically convinced that I, too, can be one of these people that make six-figures from writing. Inundated with her enthusiasm, I actually took a six-month sabbatical from teaching, and a significant pay cut, to focus on writing my book. Well, no, not just a book. According to all the self-publishing lore, I have to have at least a novella and two novels in a series before I can start making any real money. Well, a month into my sabbatical, I only have a thousand words on a novel that I have no further interest in writing.
I follow Ava upstairs and decide to take a break from the hectic morning of sledding by relaxing with a good thriller on my Kindle. Ava flips on the television and takes out her tea set. She rarely watches TV a hundred percent of the time, but she likes to have it on in the background as she plays. Given that she’s an only child, she’s actually quite independent. Unlike a lot of Emily’s nurse friends’ kids, who need to be entertained every second of every day, Ava really likes her alone time and knows how to keep herself company. The only thing she really requires is that I’m present in the same room. But still, watching her play by herself, makes me a little sad. Even though Emily doesn’t particularly love her long shifts at the hospital, I’m not sure that she would do that great as a stay at home mom. She really thrives on energy and excitement, and I have a feeling that she finds spending time with Ava a little boring. She’s always pointing out how fun Ava’s going to be when she’s a little more grown up and how glad she is that we don’t have a baby anymore.
I guess that’s what they call the irony of fate. It was Emily who actually wanted us to have a baby. We met in college, got married the summer after graduation, but didn’t have Ava until we’d been together for ten years. We lived in a two-bedroom house with a mortgage that we could afford, had two used cars, and went on vacation three times a year. I was pretty happy with the way things were. But Emily wasn’t. She said that our life wasn’t complete without a child and that she would leave me unless we had one. I didn’t not want to have one bad enough so I thought, what the hell? What’s the worst that could happen?
Well, what actually happened was amazing. We had this little creature who I suddenly love more than anyone else in the world. She became the reason that I get up in the morning. I couldn’t wait to get home to spend time with her. She became everything that I never knew I needed or wanted. But the experience was completely different for Emily. At first, she struggled with postpartum depression. She barely got out of bed or touched Ava. She said that she regretted having her, that our life was completely different now, and that she wanted to send her back. Her words frightened me, and I scoured the Internet reading horror stories about women whose depression was left untreated and they killed themselves, their spouses, and even their kids. When she finally agreed to go to the doctor and got a prescription, things had slowly gotten better. But five years later, she still doesn’t have the same connection to Ava that I do. I know that she feels terrible about it so I agree to get things that will make her happy. She wanted the big house in the best neighborhood, she got it. She wanted two new cars to match our neighbors’ cars, she got them. She wanted the large garage that we can’t afford to fill and the acre of land that we can’t afford to landscape, she got it. But still, there’s a void. I know that Emily’s jealous of my relationship with Ava. She’s jealous that Ava loves spending time with me and that she doesn’t feel the same way toward Ava as I do. But there’s nothing that I can really do to fix it. I’m not sure that there’s anything Emily can do about it either. You simply love someone as much as you can, or you don’t. There are no in-betweens.
A few minutes later, I hear a car pull into the driveway of the house next door. Our neighbor Jim owns it, but he moved to Arizona for the winter, and it’s now rented to four girls in their early to mid-twenties. The sound of their laughter reverberates around our silent bedroom community. I hear them park their cars in the driveway and gather their bags, slamming the trunk with abandon the way only teenagers or people whose teen years are not that long behind them do. A few seconds later, I hear the jingling of the keys and the bang of the front door hitting the doorframe.
That’s my cue.
I head to the kitchen and position myself in front of our quartz kitchen island. This spot gives me the perfect view into their kitchen.
The perfect place from which to watch her.
Her name is Charlie Easton. She’s twenty-five and twelve years younger than I am. She has been my next-door neighbor since October seventeenth, for almost five precious and wonderful months. Her bedroom window is directly across from my office and one of the reasons why I may not be as productive at writing my novel. She doesn’t believe in closing her blinds, and she doesn’t own drapes. I don’t know much about her except that she’s a 911 operator, a fact I learned after finding her on Facebook.
Believe me, I hate being the creepy old guy next door who stares at my next-door neighbor. I never thought that this was who I would end up becoming. But I can’t help myself. She’s beautiful, charming, and fun in every way that I’ve forgotten that women can be. At least, she seems to be. She has shoulder-length ash blonde hair that she likes to wear in a messy bun at the top of her head. She wears just enough makeup to accentuate the gorgeousness of her big hazel eyes and red lips. Her skin is tan from spending time outside even in a place that only gets six hours of daylight in the winter.
I do the dishes that I specifically saved for the occasion, so that I can have a good reason for staring into her kitchen. Charlie lives with three roommates, two of whom are probably more attractive by objective standards than she is. But that’s the thing about beauty and attractiveness, isn’t it? There is no such thing as an objective standard. There are cultural standards, TV and magazine standards, and personal standards. All the men on the street – Levi’s, Logan’s, Ellie’s, and about five other dads that I’ve spoken with – agree that Jim is one unlucky guy. He had to move out so that we could have the hottest young girls move in. Logan’s dad thinks Eleanor is the hottest, and Levi’s dad likes Elizabeth and Sarah the best. But it’s Charlie who is my favorite. There’s something more serious about her, even though she laughs louder than the rest. She has this look about her. It’s like she has been through something. Not that she’s damaged, just that she has been around. Overhearing a few conversations with her roommates, I also know that she isn’t one to put up with shit. She’s not a doormat. She’s a woman with strong convictions and opinions, and she doesn’t let guys run her life. I like that in a woman. It reminds me of the woman I married.
Despite the fact that I’m an old creep who peeks at her through my window, I do not have any bad intentions. I don’t have any intentions at all. I’m not going to cheat on my wife. I just like watching Charlie. I like watching her laugh and dance and talk. I like watching her fall asleep to Netflix on her iPad. And most of all, I like watching her have sex.
I’ve only seen Charlie have sex once. It was a late afternoon. Emily was about to get home. I was upstairs in my office, staring at a blank computer screen. Snow was just starting to fall and the world had this mysterious twilight quality to it, the kind that will make you believe in magic. Suddenly, the door to her room opened. Charlie ran in, laughing and stumbling over her feet. A tall, slender guy about her age followed close behind. He was dressed in his official uniform and, squinting, I could make out the name on his jacket – Officer Silko. I’d never seen him before, but I’d seen his Alaska State Trooper SUV parked outside of her house a number of times.
Charlie and Officer Silko were clearly having a good time. Neither seemed to even be drunk. No one else was home and they were talking so loudly that I could. . .
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