Page 112 of The Quiet Tenant

“Cece’s not here.”

He’s telling me and the people who have started gathering in the living room and at the entrance of the house, alarmed. This is the first time I’ve seen him like this. A father, wounded, something vital pried away from him.

“She’s got my kid,” he says. “In the truck.”

No one understands what he means exactly, but we get the essential. The truck has driven away with the girl in it. The bones of his bones, the flesh of his flesh.

“I need a car,” he says.

People search their pockets, but I’m faster. I jog up to him, press the keys to the Civic into his hand.

He runs to the car without looking at me.

I slip into the passenger seat. This is my car, my world. I don’t need an invitation.

He twists the key in the ignition. People clear the way. The Civic’s engine roars. Its tires squeak against the asphalt.

We pull away from the house.

CHAPTER 76

The woman on the move

You are on the road. Youarethe road. Eyes on it, steadfast grasp on the wheel. You drive. You drive like him that day, when he plucked you from a patch of grass, when he removed you from the world.

He has taught you well.

A sob reaches you from the passenger side. One glance—she’s still where she’s supposed to be. Still going along with this.

It will all be okay,you want to tell her.This is all for show, but the fear is real, and for that I’ll never stop being sorry.

Left, left, right. It’s not a long drive, but time slips away from you. Maybe you drive for ten minutes and maybe you drive for a whole year. Maybe you and Cecilia take a road trip, a woman and a girl in a post-apocalyptic movie, roaming America in search of a better life, a new life, any life at all.

Just as you’re about to pass the Butcher Bros. and their cows, something in the rearview mirror. A glimmer, a Honda logo heading for you. You press harder on the gas pedal. You expect the Honda to fade into the background but it sticks to you. Soon it’s riding your bumper. You can’t shake it, like a bee on the rim of a soda can in the summer.

In the mirror, a flash of white. It’s her. Sitting in her down coat on the passenger side of the Honda. If she’s not driving, then it must be him. Coming for you, following you. Claiming back what is rightfully his.

After the cows, straight down. Bed-and-breakfast on the left. Library to your right. And the heart of it all, one building after the other. The town center.

You must get there. Even with the Honda on your back. You can’t let him catch you.

Cecilia sobs. She can feel his presence, so near, calling her back to the world she knows, to everything you just took from her. You take one hand off the wheel and feel around for hers. Press gently likeyou did in the kitchen, when you saved her dog—when you saved her together, the two of you against him.

“Shhhh,” you tell her. A calming intonation you learned from your mother as a girl, when the world wronged you and you collapsed into her arms. “Shhhh.”

Keep your eyes on the road. You must go as fast as you can without losing control. You must drive like you have never driven before.

You try. You try to do it right. The pressure of your right foot on the gas pedal, the vital grip of your hands on the steering wheel.

The Honda starts fading away. You manage, somehow, to put distance between you and him.

But it has been five years. And even before that, you weren’t a great driver. You were a city kid. You didn’t know the names of trees, the sounds of birds. You learned how to drive in Manhattan, at twenty miles per hour.

Something catches your eye. A shape heading for you, darting across your window.

You swerve. You don’t want to—it is the very last thing you want to do—but in this moment you do not control your hands.

It was a bird,your brain tells you, and you see it flying away. Some type of bird of prey, hooked claws, a beak like a can opener. Flying too close to you, too close to the truck. And still, unscathed.

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