Crossroads by Penny Freeman
Rob understood his brother’s love for the road,
especially, as then, in the dead of night. Like himself, Nate had never been
one for large crowds. On the road, one was utterly alone. The growling four-fifty-four
V8 of Nate’s cherry 1977 El Camino Classic and the steel-belted radials humming
on the blacktop lulled to silence all the demands that sucked the life out of Rob.
They slipped away like the endless blur of the dotted, white line that streamed
beyond the windshield. The highway soothed. Mesmerized. It held life at a safe
distance where Rob could nibble off bits at a time, or ignore it altogether as
the mood suited.
Except, there he was, returning with his brother’s
ashes, hurtling at 75 mph toward the madness: the boss, the job, the mounting
bills and overdrawn bank account. The labyrinth of life with no easy way out. Toward
Annabelle—his own Nan—and
that look of dread in her eyes: anguish that assaulted him and reticence that held
him at arm’s length.
Rob jerked awake,
jolted from a deep, dreamless slumber by something—the baby? He couldn’t
remember. Nan had argued with him, and he put off going to bed until she slept to
avoid a demand to hash it out. He turned in very late, and the fog of somnolence
melded to his brain like his kids’ sticky hands to his skin. Scarcely lucid, he
ignored his transient bob to the surface of consciousness, and surrendered
again to the depths of sleep.
Her voice prevented it,
however . . . a low murmur . . . hesitant . . . wary—scraps of sound distorted by the
cobwebs of his sleep-deprived brain. He rolled over, pried open his eyes, and
forced the numerals of the digital clock into focus. 04:00. Good grief. He had
to be up in two hours. Couldn’t she cut him some slack?
He turned toward the
wall and fended her off with the silence of feigned sleep. He was tired of
bending over backward to make her happy, and for what? No matter how he tried,
he couldn’t figure out what the devil she wanted.
