Page 51 of Under the Stars

I started off toward the stairs—the same stairs where Sedge found me in full meltdown twelve weeks ago and tried to offer me comfort. A total stranger.

What I would give to run into Sedge on those stairs right now.

David called after me.

“By the time you come back with a single member of the crew, that painting will be at the bottom of Long Island Sound.”

“You wouldn’t do that.”

“What have I got to lose, babe? Tell me. Enlighten me. This is my shot. You’re going to try calling my bluff? You’re willing to take that chance? Fuck around and find out, Audrey.”

—

So we are where we are, just north of Springfield, Massachusetts, driving along at a respectful speed so as not to attract any attention.

By now I’ve figured out that my husband is not quite in his right mind.

That six months on the run have stolen what human generosity he might once have harbored in his minuscule soul and replaced it with the instincts of a cornered animal.

He might do anything. Take any risk. Better not to trigger him. Go along and wait for your chance.

But please, God. Don’t let him take her out with him.

Providence Dare.

Don’t let him destroy the painting too.

David is all nerves. Keeps checking the rearview mirror, the side mirrors. In the beginning, I kept hoping some cop would pull us over. Kept hoping for the flashing lights. Then I realized there was no way David was going to pull over.

So now I’m praying for no flashing lights.

No cops. Not until we’re stopped for gas, stopped for food.

To think I used to heap scorn on Meredith for the mess she’d made of her personal affairs—the colossal mistakes and errors of judgment, the men she’d hooked up with, the people she’d trusted, the bad investments, the willful sabotage of what could have been a happy life.

Now look.

This mess is on me. My bad judgment, my willful blindness to what I didn’t want to see, didn’t want to believe, because I wanted something so badly, apparently—needed to fill some damn hole inside me, some void, that I didn’t read the label first. Couldn’t bear to read the label.

There’s no cleaning up a mess like this. All I can do is limit the damage. Somehow.

David checks the mirror for the thousandth time. “Fuck,” he says.

“What’s the matter? Highway patrol?”

“No. Some fucking sports car. Behind us since Norwich. I keep slowing down for him to pass and he won’t take it.”

I turn my head to look out through the rear window. “Where? I don’t see it.”

“Behind the SUV. Couple of cars back. Little green convertible.” He looks again. “Damn. I can’t see him.”

I turn to face forward. “It’s your imagination. Just some guy going the same way we are.”

I flick my gaze to the side mirror. All I see is the grille of some SUV the same color as ours, driven by a man in a baseball cap who’s looking at his phone.

I glance the other way, to the fuel gauge. Still a third of a tank left.

“Well,” says David. “I guess there’s one way to find out for sure, right?”

Without warning, without anything so basic as a turn signal, he swerves off the interstate onto the exit ramp.

When I look again in the side mirror, the SUV is gone. In its place is a small, graceful car the color of Douglas fir, driven by a man wearing sunglasses and a barn-red hat that, if I could make it out, would probably reveal the words Taproom At The Mo.

—

I think it was about a week ago that Sedge taught me how to drive his car.

“Everyone should know how to work a stick shift,” he told me, as we idled at the end of the top of the airport runway at dawn—a time, he confidently assured me, when nobody would be flying in or out.

“In case an apocalypse knocks out all the automatic transmissions?”

“I was going to say because it’s fun,” he said. “But apocalypse also works.”

I did not get the hang of it right away.

My driving habits were too ingrained, my muscle memory too deep.

The coordination of left and right legs—clutch and brake and gas in a delicate dance—took some time to choreograph.

The navigation of the gearbox needed mapping.

Patiently Sedge endured the stalls and the lurches, the grinding of gears, the abuse of his beautiful automobile.

The sun rose and turned from gold to white.

The haze lifted. The warm air sifted through my hair.

“That’s all right, try again,” Sedge told me, for the millionth time.

Finally I figured it out. I discovered the point of friction under my left foot and fed the correct amount of gas from my right foot.

I sensed the instant when the gear had reached its limit and sent my left foot back to the floor, my right hand nimbly around the gearbox.

I reached the top gear like a purr of relief, and I laughed out loud with the glee of it.

“See? Half an hour and you’ve got it down,” said Sedge. “A natural.”

He let me practice a bit longer. The air grew hotter.

Quincy panted between us from his perch on the tiny rear seat.

“Think you can handle the drive back?” he asked at last, when I had made my way up and down the runway a few times, when I didn’t need to think about every adjustment of legs and hands.

I squinted at the broad, empty stretch of tarmac before us, ending in a clean line where a ridge of stone held back the sea. “Or you could show me what this car can really do,” I said.

He grinned. “Hold my coffee.”

I gripped Quincy in my lap as we flew around the runway at speeds that tore the breath from my lungs, that turned my blood into gas.

The wind snatched my hair in its teeth. My stomach lay miles behind.

Sedge would make some flicker of hand and leg, some nick of muscle, and the Aston Martin spun on its axle and launched in the other direction.

The engine roared joyfully. At my side, Sedge sat like the eye of a storm.

I felt his calm in my bones, holding me snug.

When he came to a stop, poised at the end of the runway near the access road, I pulled my hair from my lips and asked him where the hell he learned how to do that.

“Treated myself to a couple of weeks at a driver training course,” he said, “when I sold my business a few years ago.”

At the time, the words sold my business flew right past me. I guess I must have figured he meant some kind of aristocratic side hustle, like detailing sailboats.

“You mean a racecar driving thing?” I asked.

“Kinda like that. In the Italian Alps, near Turin. Always wanted to do it, never had the time.”

“Looks like you got your money’s worth,” I said.

Sedge put the car back into gear and turned up the access road, back toward West Cliff Road and Greyfriars. The Aston Martin bumped sedately over the potholes in the gravel.

“So what other special skills have you been hiding from me?” I asked him.

He tilted his head and thought for a second or two. “I guess I can ride a horse pretty well.”

“I’m going to translate that from you into Olympic bronze medal in eventing ?”

He laughed. “Also, I can fence.”

“No way. You were a fencing geek?”

“Let’s just say lacrosse wasn’t for me.”

I stroked Quincy’s ears and stared at the blade of Sedge’s jaw. The grip of his fingers on the steering wheel. “So where do you keep your suit of armor, Sir Sedgewick?”

“Honestly, I only bring it out for ren fairs,” he said. “But if you ever need rescuing from a gang of medieval bandits, I’m your man.”

—

At the time, the banter didn’t stick. I liked the idea of Sedge whirling around the airport runway in his James Bond car, of steeplechasing his horse across a field of waving grass and slashing some supervillain with his rapier, but I did not imagine I might ever need to call those skills into my own service.

Would not have dreamed anyone might leap into the seat of his racing car and tear across state lines to rescue me from my own stupidity.

The sight of those familiar round headlights, the curve of the hood, is like a spear through my gut. How long? How far? When did he spot me? What’s he thinking?

Has he called Mike? Called the police?

“Fuck,” says David. “Anyone you know?”

“I don’t think so.”

He turns his head for a second to look at me. I keep my gaze on the road ahead. The approaching signal at the top of the exit.

“Is it your boyfriend, Audrey?” he asks, in a soft voice.

“Fuck you, David,” I whisper. I’m too exhausted to argue, too numb to play games. Too scared. I just want out of this nightmare.

I want to be back inside my bedroom with Sedge. When he asks what I’m thinking, I want to tell him the truth.

I think I might be falling in love with you, and it scares the shit out of me.

David turns right at the exit and starts down this rural highway. “I never stopped loving you, Audrey. That’s the truth.”

“You don’t ghost people you love, David. You don’t ghost your own wife .”

“I was stressed. Scared as hell. I knew I’d failed you.”

“Everyone fails at stuff.”

“I figured I didn’t deserve you. I just thought—if I could make the money back, come back to you and make it up to you—show you how much I love you—”

“ Love me? Are you kidding? I don’t think you ever loved me. Now that I know what love actually is. What it feels like when somebody actually cares about you.”

“Don’t say that. Don’t tell me I’m too late.”

I turn my head to the window and the rectangle of mirror on which Sedge’s car is reflected back to me. He must know David’s on to him by now. He’s keeping close.

“Shit,” David mumbles.

The few gas stations and bait shops around the exit trail away behind us.

Nothing but barns and fields and hills. The sun pounds through the windows.

The road goes around a bend and flattens out again.

David presses the accelerator. I’m thinking to myself, You realize you’re trying to race an Aston Martin, right?

Then I remember I don’t want a race. I want Sedge to disappear.

Just a harmless flat tire, at no damage to the car itself, no damage whatsoever to its driver, please God, you can take me, you can take the damn painting, fine—whatever you want, take it.

But don’t take Sedge.

I turn to David. “Slow down, okay? It’s all right. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I can’t lose you again, Audrey.”

“You won’t. Just slow down. I don’t want anyone hurt.”

He reaches out to take my hand. I let his fingers curl around mine. The sweat from his palm dampens the back of my hand.

David glances again in the rearview mirror. A few tiny hairs stick to the skin of his temple. “Who the hell is this, Audrey? He needs to back off. You need to tell him to fucking back off, okay?”

“I don’t have my phone.”

“Who the hell does he think he is? You’re my wife .”

“Just stop the car,” I tell him. “I’ll explain. I’ll tell him to go home.”

David shakes his head. The Range Rover spurts faster. The fields fly past us now. Corn upon corn.

“Your fucking mother,” he mutters.

“What about my mother?”

“I just needed a few more grand. Ten thousand. Just enough to make payroll.”

“You asked Meredith for money?”

“It was a loan. It was for you. You want to know what she said to me?”

A stop sign flies past the window.

“Slow down, David. You didn’t even—”

“She said she was tapped out. Tapped out, Audrey. Your mother, fucking Meredith Fisher, tapped out. She said she’d fed us enough rope. What was it? She’d rather flush her money down the toilet than give us another penny.”

“Wait a second. You’re saying my mother’s been giving you money?”

“ Us money.”

“Since when?”

“I don’t know. Last year. All I asked was a little cash to get by. Maybe post us on her socials once in a while, for God’s sake, I mean what’s the point of having Meredith Fisher for a mother-in-law if you can’t—Jesus, what the fuck is going on with this psycho?”

I look back in the mirror, then ahead through the windshield, then back to the mirror. The steady round headlights hug the center of the reflection. The corn ripples on either side of us. A sudden pasture appears to the right, and just as suddenly, the Aston Martin drops back.

“Pussy,” says David, and the exact instant the word leaves his mouth, this bang sends the Range Rover swerving all over the road until it careens into the pasture, plows through a fence, and lurches to a stop.

The seatbelt holds me across the chest in a vise grip. I gasp for breath. I hear David swearing next to me.

“Are you okay?” I gasp out.

He cuts the engine and leans his forehead against the steering wheel. “Fuck. Fuck this shit.”

“It’s all right,” I tell him. “You’re going to be all right, okay?”

“All my life. I thought—when I married you—I thought everything would be fine. I thought everything was taken care of. Your mother—I thought—”

“Hey. It’s okay. I’ll help you, all right? I’ll help you get back on your feet.”

“Don’t you get it, Audrey? I don’t want your fucking help. I just want—” He pounds the steering wheel. “Something to work out.”

I put my hand on the buckle of the seatbelt and release it.

“Stay in the car!” he yells.

I reach for the handle. The door’s locked. Before David can activate the master switch, I unlock it and yank the door open.

“I said stay in the car!”

He pulls a gun out from under the seat and points it at me.

“Don’t move, Audrey.”

“Why not?” I whisper.

“Shut the door. Slowly.”

I reach for the door handle. Calculate my odds. In the distance, I hear the familiar rumble of a high-performance engine and it occurs to me that David has no plan here. He’s winging it. He’s not going to make it and he knows it. He’s just trying to buy time.

Time for what? Time how?

He wants me in the car because he knows Sedge will come for me.

And he wants to get rid of Sedge.

I push the door wide open and roll out onto the grass. My head hits the corner of the door. I hear a shout, a thump. My head is wet with blood. The grass sticks to my face. I’ve stopped rolling now. I steady myself with my hands and try to rise. Someone seizes me around the waist and hauls me up.

“Don’t move!” David yells.

Something hard presses against my temple. My vision’s blurred with pain and blood. I see the Aston Martin. I see a man standing a few yards away, holding his palms out before him. Sedge. I mouth something at him, I’m not sure what.

Go away. Get out of here.

Sedge calls out, Don’t hurt her, man. Just drop the gun. The police will be here any second.

David yells back, If the police come, she’s dead.

Okay, man. Okay. I’ll tell them to withdraw. Just let me get my phone out of my pocket, here. Okay? Don’t hurt her.

I hear a car engine, a skid of tires. I lift my foot and deliver a swift kick to David’s shin.

He buckles. In the instant of his weakness, I turn around and tackle him to the ground.

The thud rattles my bones. David heaves me away and jumps to his feet.

I hoist myself up to tackle him again, but it’s too late. He aims the gun, fires.

Sedge falls.