"You're not going to leave me here too, are you?" she asked.
"Why would I?"
"Because I was with him."
"You helped me. That's enough."
Once we were back on the highway, I asked how well she knew Ray.
"About an hour," she said. "My car broke down and he stopped. At first I thought he was helping me. Then he started acting like I owed him something for the ride. I was waiting for a chance to get away from him."
I asked why she had not simply arranged to have her car towed.
"It wasn't really my car," she admitted. "It was my husband's company car. I was already leaving him."
I gave her a look, and she sighed.
"I should probably tell you the whole story. I caught my husband cheating. To get even, I slept with his brother and told him about it. I said we were even and that if he kept cheating, I was done playing by different rules. He told me men were supposedly built to cheat and women were supposed to tolerate it. Then he said he was leaving me because he couldn't live with a wife who behaved the way he did."
That night, after he fell asleep, Sarah took the company car and left. She emptied the accounts she believed she was entitled to access, drove until the vehicle broke down, and eventually ended up on the roadside where I found her.
I started laughing.
"What's so funny?" she asked.
"The coincidence. We're almost running from the same kind of disaster."
Then I told her my story.
When I finished, she stared at me.
"Your father and your brother?"
"Yes."
"And you're definitely not reconciling with your wife?"
"Not a chance," I said, though at that point I did not yet know how complicated that answer would become.
Sarah had family in San Diego and planned to stay with them until she could rebuild her life. She said her husband, Bert, might eventually come looking for her, but for the moment simply reaching family mattered more than anything else.
I told her I wanted to see the Alamo and the River Walk first. She laughed and said that if I was going to turn my personal collapse into a road trip, I might as well see something worth remembering. Since neither of us was in a hurry, we decided to travel west together.
In San Antonio, we visited the Alamo, walked the River Walk, and bought a paper road atlas because neither of us trusted ourselves to keep wandering without some kind of plan. The route to San Diego was roughly fifteen hundred miles, but we deliberately stretched it out, stopping when we wanted instead of treating the drive like an evacuation.
Somewhere along the way, companionship became attraction. We were both angry at spouses who had betrayed us, both living in the strange emotional vacuum between a marriage ending and a future beginning, and we became intimate during the trip.
Sarah admitted that part of what she wanted from me was the freedom to explore parts of herself she had refused to share with Bert. One night she asked to try an intimate act she had repeatedly rejected in her marriage, partly from curiosity and partly because she knew the knowledge would sting Bert if he ever learned about it. I warned her that she might discover she disliked it after all. She said that even if she did, Bert would never hear that version of the story.
The experience turned out differently from what she expected, and afterward she laughed at the irony of having denied Bert something for years only to discover, with someone she had met on the road, that her assumptions about herself had been wrong.
The drive to San Diego stretched into nearly a week because we stopped whenever we found something worth seeing. By the time we reached the city on a Saturday evening, Sarah told me she wanted one more night before going to her mother's house.
We stayed together that night, and she deliberately chose to try things she had once refused with her husband, partly out of curiosity and partly because she knew the knowledge would bother him if he ever learned about it.
The next evening, I drove her to her mother's house. Before getting out, Sarah looked at me sadly.
"I'd invite you in, but it would be awkward. My husband, Bert, is there. Apparently he's trying to convince me to take him back."
"Are you going to?"
"I don't know. I still love him. I've loved him since seventh grade. I left because he said he wanted a divorce."
"If you want me to stay nearby, I can."
She shook her head. "It's tempting, but what happened to you is too fresh. You shouldn't make decisions for me when you haven't made your own yet."
She gave me her number on a piece of paper and kissed me before walking away. I was tempted to call her back, but I drove off instead.
That night, from a motel room, I called Mom. A man's voice answered.
It was my father.
I hung up immediately. Mom had told me she had thrown him out, so I had no idea why he was answering her phone. On impulse, I called Cindy.
"Hello?"
"Hi, Cindy. It's Bob."
"Bob? Where are you?"
Again, I gave a false location. "I'm calling for an update. I tried Mom, but Dad answered. Last I heard, she'd kicked him out."
"She did," Cindy said. "Your dad needed to collect his things from the house and garage. Your mom gave him the weekend. She's staying with your Aunt Mildred until he's done."
"How are things with you?"
"I hired a lawyer and filed for divorce. Dave says he's going to fight it, but he can't stop it forever."
Then she told me something I had not known.
"Your dad and Dave moved in with Sonia after your mom and I kicked them out."
I was surprised but mostly numb.
"I don't care," I said. "They're all adults. They can ruin each other's lives."
"When are you coming back?"
"I'm not sure I can. I still think I might be facing charges for what happened with Dave."