Lineage(13)

“We’re gonna be okay now, baby. We’re going a long way away.” Lance nodded and then opened his mouth, about to say something, but shut it, as though the thought had made the muscles in his jaw spasm. Molly looked imploringly at her son and squeezed his shoulder again with what she hoped was warmth and confidence. “Go on, honey, what were you going to say?”

Lance looked out the windshield for a moment before turning back to speak. “Why tonight?” he asked.

Molly pursed her lips and looked at the rearview mirror before answering. “It was just time. Does that make sense?” she asked, and waited, with only the sound of the car’s tires thumping over the occasional patched crack on the road to break the silence. Lance finally nodded without looking at her. She dropped her hand from his shoulder, thinking that the answer had satisfied him, when he spoke again.

“We could’ve done this a long time ago.”

The words drove deep into her chest and then lay heavily in her stomach, waiting to give birth to an enormous litter of guilt. Tears began to form in her eyes, and in that moment she hated herself so deeply that she felt her own loathing was a living thing, something that breathed and moved. She feared it would tear free from the slight cage that bound it inside of her and slash its way out into the rest of the world.

“I know, honey, I know” was all she could manage through the tears and the shame that swelled in her throat.

Lance looked over at his mother and watched the emerald tracks of her tears race down her cheeks in the glow of the dash. Even though there was a blossoming in his stomach that swelled with relief at moving rapidly away from his father, he wanted to say so much more, to hurt her for waiting so long to save them. This is all it would have taken? A bit of planning and a stealthy escape? This was the giant hurdle that his mother had been unable to overcome for years on end while they both suffered at the hands of a man who harbored nothing but disdain and hatred for them? Lance’s face drew down in a scowl, and his breath began to heave as his mind searched for what to say to his mother next, to make her understand the folly of her waiting game, the utter wrongness of it all. He was about to unleash the fury of his anguish upon her when he noticed her eyes were bulging in their sockets, her mouth a dark tunnel as she stared into the rearview mirror. Lance spun in his seat to look out of the back window.

A lone headlight had crested the hill behind them.

Lance stared at the floating orb as it descended the rise and continued on like a spirit searching for revenge. He turned back around and sat in his seat, his heart thumping so solidly on the inside of his ribs that he could see his vision shake with each jarring beat. He’d found them. He was going to catch them. This was the end.

Lance looked over at his mother and was relieved to see that her expression had changed. The look of terror that had filled her face when she spotted the headlight had now turned into a grimace of concentration as she pushed the accelerator, and the car dropped gradually down another rolling hill, which blocked out the headlight behind them like a small sun setting below a black horizon.

“Mama.”

“I know, honey, I know.” Molly’s eyes shot from the left to the right in search of an exit from the small highway. There were many dirt roads that led from the main thoroughfare, crisscrossing the local farmland. But as they neared each one, she dismissed it as an escape since there was really nowhere to hide in the open country that surrounded them. For a moment she considered turning down one of the dirt roads and simply dousing their lights, in the hope that Anthony would not look too closely as he shot by, but the thought was banished as the single sphere of light appeared once again, this time much closer.

“We’re gonna have to outrun him,” she said hollowly. She saw Lance’s small head turn to look at her, but she had no time now to offer an encouraging smile or even eye contact. Her eyes were glued to the road in front of them as it stretched away into an ocean of darkness. How many miles until town? she thought as the glow behind them began to grow. Could they make it there before he caught them and ran them off the road?

The yellow dividing lines passed by with increasing speed, there and gone in the night, counting off the seconds of their short-lived flight. Lance imagined what death would be like, not for the first time. Would Jesus be waiting there for him in the dark with his arm outstretched like at church? Would it hurt to pass from this life to whatever lay beyond here? He knew it would hurt to die, his father would make sure of that, but what would become of him? Would he float up, weightless, into the night air? Would there be gates made of gold like the priest sometimes spoke about? Would his mother be there? Would God let her in after all of her waiting?