You Deserve Each Other(42)

I snap a picture of the parking lot and send it. Car broke down. I’m stranded.

His phone call cuts me off midsentence: I’ve got Dots candy in my coat pocket. I’m going to leave a trail like Hansel and

“Naomi?” He sounds afraid. “How far into town are you? What happened?”

“That car is crap!” I exclaim. “It tried to kill me.”

“I told you a million miles ago to change your oil and you said it was none of my business.” In his mind, he’s twirling through a field of I-Told-You-So’s. That’s his idea of heaven.

“Not that car. I traded it for Leon’s clunker. It’s a stick shift, Nicholas. I don’t know how to drive a fricking stick shift! Bad things happened and I left it in the middle of the road. Now I’m in a Kmart parking lot.” I kick a rock and squint up at the gray building, then a scattering of other dark buildings with empty parking lots along the same strip. I’m in a retail graveyard. “Maybe it’s a Toys R Us.”

“Jesus Christ.” I can hear cars whooshing by on his end of the line. He’s out on the sidewalk.

“Don’t let me die here. I want to be somewhere warm when I go.”

“Yeah, better ease into those warmer temperatures. It’ll get a lot hotter once you arrive at your destination.” I’m about to wail. “You need to tell me exactly where you are.”

I wring my hands. Nicholas is on the phone, which makes him feel close, so it’s okay to freak out now. He’s going to remain calm no matter what. We’ve always been balanced that way: when one of us loses it, the other can’t. Whoever didn’t call dibs on instant hysterics has no choice but to keep it together.

“The first stoplight when you get into town. I went off, uh, into a ditch. Not in the car, I mean. I left on foot.”

“Why did you leave your car?”

“I don’t know! It all happened so fast. Give me time to think of a better excuse.”

“I’ll be right there. Go back to the car.”

I don’t go back to the car, but I do tiptoe out from behind the building and stand at the side of the road. There are flashing lights—a police officer and a tow truck. Oh lord, I’m going to jail.

Someone spots me and points, and my instinct is to crouch down. There’s nothing to hide behind, so I’m crouching for no reason whatsoever. Forget jail. I’m getting a padded cell.

Out of habit, I’m scouring the road for a flash of gold Maserati, so when Nicholas steps out of a Jeep it takes me a second to recalibrate.

“Nicholas!” I hiss in a loud whisper. It’s no use. I’m drowned out by the commotion of cars whooshing by. I wave my arms like an air traffic controller. He doesn’t see me, striding straight into the heart of the chaos to take charge.

He checks over the abandoned vehicle and shakes his head to himself, seizing my purse from the passenger seat before shutting the driver’s-side door. Holy cow, I left my purse.

Men in uniforms converge on him. I hide my face behind my hands from a safe distance, not wanting to overhear what is sure to be a humiliating story of my stop-and-run. Someone nods in my direction and Nicholas whirls to face me. Even from this far, I discern the odd glint in his eyes and read his mind like it’s typed in a thought bubble over his head.

Well, well, well. How are we feeling about our choices now, Naomi?

Not good, is how I’m feeling. But at least I’m standing on the less policeman-y side of the road.

He says something to the officer, who looks at me, too. Identity confirmed. I’m leaving here in handcuffs, which will tidily accomplish my goal of getting Mrs. Rose to catapult me out of the family tree.

Nicholas calls somebody on his phone and chats for a minute before handing the phone to the officer. They chat for a minute, too; all the while, Nicholas is just looking and looking at me, and there’s nowhere to hide from him. He’s my only ally. He’s my worst enemy.

He’s walking across the road right toward me, wearing the coat I call his Sherlock Holmes coat. It was expensive and the nicest gift I’ve ever gotten him. He wears it from the very beginning of autumn until the very end of spring, with a scarf looped beneath the wide collar. The fact that he hasn’t burned it yet and danced around its ashes seems aggressively kind in my current frame of mind.

His face isn’t grim or smug, but neutral save for the tiny crease between his eyebrows. Concern.

“What happened?” he asks when he approaches.

I shake my head. I can’t talk about it. I’m already pretending this never happened. “Am I going to jail?”

“No.” He looks down at my purse in his grip. “Do you need to grab anything out of the car?”

“No.”

He wants to ask more questions, I can tell. Nicholas gives me a long, searching look, then removes his coat and puts it around my shoulders. His fingers play with the top button, as if to fasten it, but he lets his hand fall.

He steers me to the Jeep without another word. I break into a speed-walk when we pass the police car and tow truck, half waiting for somebody to reach out and snatch me. After I dart a paranoid peek over my shoulder for the umpteenth time, Nicholas smirks. “Relax.”

The single word unlocks the deadbolt on my ability to form coherent speech. “Is Leon going to be in trouble? I haven’t gotten the title switched yet. What’s going to happen to the car? It’s not actually broken down.”