Page 113 of The Quiet Tenant

Who cares about the bird?

The truck is drifting. In the passenger seat, Cecilia shrieks. Her hand searches for a handle, for any surface she can hold on to.

You try to take back control, to get back on the road, but the truck is no longer listening to you. Like it has remembered, finally, that you are not its rightful owner. That it was never meant to serve you.

There is a drop. You, the girl, and the truck, falling together. In this moment, you belong only to the laws of physics, to the forces that pull you to the ground and the ones that let you sink.

You open your eyes. When did you close them?

You don’t know. What you do know is you never told them to close.

What you do know: That you, the girl, and the truck are no longer moving. That you are in a ditch.

What you do know: That he is out here. Chasing you.

CHAPTER 77

Emily

He drives like a madman. Like a father chasing after his daughter.

The Civic obeys him until it doesn’t. He presses the gas pedal, but the car struggles to keep up. There’s a buzzing sound.

The transmission.

He grabs for the gearshift, tries to jerk it into fourth.

It’s stuck.

The car crawls to a stop. Ahead of us, the truck speeds away.

“Fuck!”

He wrenches the gearshift left and right. Doesn’t know the secrets of the Civic, of its manual transmission.

He tries one more time to force it, but the car doesn’t budge.

“Fuck!”

His fist slams against the dashboard.

“That bitch,” he says in a voice I don’t recognize. “I should have killed her a long time ago.”

Before I can ask. Before I can formulate a single thought. Before my stomach can tighten. Before I can even think of feeling nauseous, of questioning everything I thought I knew, of hearing the air rush out of my lungs like they will never, ever inflate again, he’s gone.

He leaps out of the car and runs.

After heris all I can think.

After the woman I saw.

And his daughter.

It’s the anchor of hope, the possibility of a misunderstanding.

We all say things, right? In the heat of the moment. Things we don’t mean. Things we regret.

He runs after her, I decide.

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