Cindy hesitated.
"You aren't. Your dad and Dave told the police it was an accident. They said Dave was handling Sonia's handgun and accidentally hurt himself. They staged the scene well enough that the police accepted it."
I sat up straighter.
"Why would they protect me?"
"Your dad said the business couldn't survive the scandal. Dave wanted to blame you, but your father refused."
That explained why nobody had come looking for me as aggressively as I expected.
"You still need to come back," Cindy said. "Your mom needs help with the business."
"She has David."
"David is useless now that your father isn't around to cover for him. I think you already knew that."
She was right. I had always known David contributed far less than everyone pretended.
I asked Cindy how she was holding up.
"That's a silly question," she said. "You know how I'm doing. Probably about as well as you are. But I'm actually grateful you sent me those pictures.
Dave and I had been talking about having a baby. If we'd had one before I learned the truth, I could have ended up raising a child alone. You saved me from that."
After we hung up, I thought about the contradiction between Cindy's update and Mom's repeated insistence that Sonia was desperate to speak to me. If Sonia was truly devastated by losing me, why had she let my father and brother move into our house?
I did not have an answer.
The next morning, shouting outside my motel woke me. I looked through the window and saw a man shove a woman to the pavement before speeding away.
I went outside to help her. Her name was Mary. She was thirty-one, married, childless, and worked as an office manager for a law firm in St. Paul, Minnesota. The man who had abandoned her was her husband.
Mary had barely forty dollars left and no practical way home. She had already checked out of the motel with her husband, and after he drove off there was no room waiting for her and no ticket home. I told her I was eventually heading east and offered her a ride north if she wanted one.
She was suspicious, understandably, and asked what I expected in return. I told her I would not pursue her, and if she wanted additional reassurance she could copy my identification and plate information and send it to someone before we left. She made me repeat that I would not make a move unless she clearly chose otherwise. I agreed, and she made me seal the promise with an almost ridiculous pinky swear that somehow made both of us laugh.
"Nothing," I said. "Write down my driver's license and plate information and give it to someone you trust. If I try anything you don't want, get away from me. I'm offering transportation, not a bargain."
She studied me for a long moment and finally agreed. Before we left, she told me she intended to contact the lawyers at her firm about a divorce as soon as she got home.
After about two hours on the road, Mary put her book down and finally told me what had happened. She and Jake had taken a trip to Mexico with other people. One night Mary drank far more than she normally did and saw Jake with a woman named Nancy. Because she was intoxicated, she spent the rest of the night wondering whether what she remembered was real or some distorted half-dream.
The next morning, just before they were supposed to leave, she confronted Jake. His defensiveness answered the question before he ever admitted anything. Instead of apologizing, he blamed Mary for supposedly driving him toward other women and implied Nancy had not been the first.
Instead of apologizing, Jake blamed her for his affair and hinted that Nancy had not been the first. When Mary mentioned speaking with a lawyer, he abandoned her at the motel.
Of course, Mary wanted my story too. When I told her, her reaction was almost identical to Sarah's.
"Your father and your brother?"
"Yes."
"And you're not divorcing Sonia?"
"I haven't decided whether to file myself or just stay gone until she does."
"You're seriously considering taking her back?"
"No. At least I wasn't then. I just didn't want to spend energy on paperwork."
The map put the drive at close to two thousand miles. I told Mary that my normal pace was roughly seven hundred miles a day, about ten hours behind the wheel once stops were included. If she needed to be home faster, I could push harder.
"Three days is fine," she said. "Four or five wouldn't bother me either."
For long stretches Mary read while I drove. I hummed along to oldies, country, and whatever stations survived long enough before fading into static. When she put the book down, we talked about marriage, betrayal, fear, and what we thought we would do when we finally stopped moving.
At the first motel, we took a room with two beds. After her shower she said good night, climbed into her bed, and nothing happened. The next morning we ate breakfast and continued north.
The second night, we again booked a room with two beds. This time, after getting ready to sleep, Mary stood beside my bed and asked if she could lie next to me simply to be held. I hesitated because I knew attraction was already there, but she reminded me of the promise I had made. I agreed.
She stayed close enough that restraint took effort, but I kept my word and did not turn the night into something she had not explicitly asked for.
The next morning, she seemed almost surprised.
"I didn't think you'd actually keep your hands to yourself."
"Neither did I," I admitted. "But I said I would."
By the time we reached St. Paul late that afternoon, our trust had changed into mutual attraction. Instead of directing me immediately to her sister's house, Mary pointed me toward a Best Western and admitted she wanted the night she had deliberately stopped short of asking for before.
I reminded her that she had spent the entire trip testing whether I would respect a boundary. She smiled and said the test was over. We became intimate because both of us wanted to, not because either person owed the other anything.
The next morning, Mary said she wanted one more night beside me before dealing with lawyers, family, and Jake. The strange thing was that by then the road trip no longer felt like an escape. It felt like a series of people borrowing one another's company while trying to survive the collapse of their own lives.
The next day, she took me to her sister Julia's house. Jake was not there. Julia hated him and would never have let him inside.
I met Julia, Julia's college-age daughter Jessica, and Jessica's boyfriend Mike. Mary told them what had happened in Mexico, how Jake had abandoned her, and how she had ended up riding halfway across the country with a stranger from Michigan.
Julia did not seem shocked by Mary's opinion of Jake. She had disliked him for years and said so without hesitation. When the conversation turned to me, Mary encouraged me to tell my own story. By then I had told it so many times on the road that the sentences came out with an almost rehearsed flatness, as if I were describing someone else's family.
Julia listened quietly and asked whether I was returning to Michigan.
"I haven't decided," I said.
She explained that Jessica and her boyfriend attended the University of Michigan. If I was eventually going that direction, I could save them airfare by giving them a ride.
I agreed in principle and asked when they planned to leave.
Mary and I stayed another hour, then left. She suggested I get a motel room nearby and made it clear she intended to see me again before I left.