Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(52)

“Liliana.”

They pulled onto the interstate. The old van wasn’t fast, but it got to the speed limit eventually. Shawna considered herself a safe driver.

“That’s a really pretty name,” Shawna said. The woman didn’t seem to have an accent, but the way she said Liliana seemed to imply that she came from a place that did.

“Thank you. What are your children’s names?”

Shawna reached up to click the button on the side of the phone to turn the screen off. She didn’t want the woman to see Darren’s texts and feel unwelcome. “Jenson and Taylor. They’re my babies.”

“Bless you, Jenson, and bless you, Taylor,” the woman said softly, and Shawna felt as if she could feel the words, like a real blessing, as if even though the woman had only just glimpsed her children in the backseat, she truly loved them.

For a while, they drove in silence. Shawna did not normally care for silence, but the fact of the woman, this strange woman, this hitchhiker, in the van was so loud that she didn’t notice the lack of conversation. Traffic grew heavier and lanes multiplied. The evening sun was bold and golden behind them; the sky before them was darkening with night and with a bank of storm clouds.

“So what’s in DC, Liliana?”

“I’m looking for someone.” The woman gazed out the window. She had such a lot of long red hair, and Shawna remembered suddenly how full her own hair had gotten when she was pregnant. You didn’t lose hair when you were pregnant, and so there had just been a lot of it, big and fantastic and glorious, until the hormones changed and she started shedding again after Taylor was born. Shawna had not thought about having another baby, but now, right now, in this moment, the idea appeared and was compelling. She’d enjoyed pregnancy so much, and Darren loved the babies. She’d felt so purposeful when she was growing life.

She asked the woman, “And this person’s in DC?”

The woman shook her head. “But I might discover how to find them there. I hope.” When some people say I hope, they mean that they have none, but the woman said I hope like hope was a holy thing, or an occupation.

What do you do?

I hope.

In the rearview mirror, Shawna saw the profile of Darren’s new truck catching up, trapped behind several rows of fast-moving traffic, but there nonetheless. She found that she no longer resented the truck. Yes, she would have preferred the deck, but the truck was evidence that Darren was still volatile, still prone to youthful fits of desire. Wasn’t that what she loved about him?

Up ahead, the thunder rumbled, audible even over the sound of the minivan. Lightning jerked from cloud to cloud. Shawna had been afraid of thunderstorms when she was a girl. At first it had been an ungrounded fear, but later, she had been lying in bed when lightning arced through the window to the light switch on her bedroom wall. The new understanding that there was lawless electricity in the world meant that even the slightest cloud cover would send her darting indoors to a windowless room. She had gotten over it a long time ago, but looking at the storm now, she discovered that she was just as afraid of that power as she used to be.

It felt stupid that she and Darren had fought over something so pointless. They were good together, and they were going to have another child.

The lightning darted again, charging the atmosphere, and she looked in her rearview mirror for Darren’s truck. She wanted it to be close. She wanted to see his face.

It was close. He’d caught up and was right behind them, making a phone gesture to her in her mirror. She regretted not making up with him before they’d left.

The sound sucked out of the minivan.

It rolled back to nothing, to dead air, like the knob had been spun on reality’s volume. The minivan ghosted forward through soundless traffic.

Shawna tried to say Lord! but that required noise, and there was none.

Then there was all the sound. A cacophony of every sound of every kind and every volume screamed inside the minivan. It was decades of sounds layered on top of each other.

It was an assault.

The noise bludgeoned the occupants of the car. If there was screaming, it could not be heard amid the rest of the sound. The windshield burst; the windows burst; blood splattered from somewhere. The minivan suddenly stopped moving forward, and the truck careened into it from behind. That sound, too, was absorbed by the howl of sound in the minivan. The two vehicles spun, spun, spun, and were hit again, and again, and again, and still the sound carried on.

Then all the vehicles were motionless in the farthest right lane, and the world resumed its ordinary score.

In the truck, Darren was crumpled over the steering wheel. The minivan seeped antifreeze. Shawna was draped sloppily back against her seat, blood running from her eyes and ears, her body battered. Everything in the interior of the minivan appeared to have been tumbled and crushed—the epicenter of a personal earthquake.

In the backseat of the minivan, Jenson and Taylor wailed. They were soft and unharmed, though the backseat was pounded out of shape and their car seats were compacted and split.

A teen girl climbed out of the passenger seat of the minivan. She was as untouched as the children in the backseat. She had long red hair, freckles all across her skin, and green-glass eyes, and she was quietly crying.

She crouched on the shoulder of the road and rocked with her knuckle pressed against her teeth until she heard the sound of an approaching siren. Then she stood and began to walk toward DC.