Chapter 1 - THE ROAD BEYOND THE LAST EXIT
“I'm asking the question you already answered.”
Sabrina Whitmore looked at Grant as though he had broken a rule by listening.
“You can't hold one conversation against me for the rest of our lives.”
“I'm not planning to.”
That should have frightened her. Instead, she reached for the pearl bracelet on the dresser, the one he'd given her after she complained they never spent enough time together.
“I was joking with my friends. Women say ridiculous things over drinks. You know that.”
“I know you weren't joking.”
“Then why ask?”
Grant considered the question. Because part of him had hoped she would refuse to become the woman he'd overheard. Because he was accustomed to inspecting quarterly losses and criminally negligent contracts, yet had never checked whether the person sleeping beside him loved him. Because the answer mattered even after he'd heard it.
“I wanted to give you the opportunity to tell me the truth.”
Sabrina's eyes flashed. “You want the truth? You're gone before breakfast. You come home talking about acquisitions and board fights. Half the time when I tell you something, I can see you're thinking about your phone. You bought me a necklace instead of coming to dinner with my parents. And you expect me to say the lifestyle doesn't matter?”
Some of that was true. He'd missed dinners. He had learned to solve disappointment with purchases. Once, she had wanted a weekend at the coast; he'd sent a driver and a suite upgrade because a merger ran late.
“You could have told me you were lonely,” he said.
“I did.”
“You also could have told me you didn't want to marry me.”
Her silence gave him that answer too.
He walked to the closet and took a worn canvas overnight bag from the top shelf. It had accompanied him through college, when he'd traveled by bus with a sandwich wrapped in foil and a scholarship letter in his pocket. He put in two shirts, jeans, toiletries, and the sweater his mother had knitted before arthritis made the needles impossible to hold.
Sabrina watched him. “This is dramatic.”
“No. Dramatic would be calling our families downstairs.”
“Where are you going?”
“I don't know.”
“You have a board presentation Thursday.”
“I'm aware.”
“And our engagement portraits are Friday.”
He zipped the bag. “Cancel them.”
At last, something like fear appeared in her face. “Grant, don't make a permanent decision because I said something stupid.”
“I'm not making a permanent decision tonight. I'm making a decision about tonight.”
He took off his watch and laid it on the dresser. He left the cuff links, the wallet with too many cards, and the phone that had been vibrating steadily since dinner. From a drawer he took an older phone and a little cash. It was an absurd privilege, being able to disappear without wondering how to pay rent. He recognized it, and hated that recognizing it changed nothing.
As he passed her, Sabrina said, “When you calm down, you'll realize nobody loves you in a vacuum. Everybody needs something.”
He stopped. “I know.”
He'd spent his life proving he could provide every imaginable thing. Nobody had ever asked what providing had cost him.
In the underground garage, he walked past six cars and stopped at a square, faded-blue Volvo. His mother had owned it before he'd bought her a new car. He'd kept it against everyone's advice, maintaining the old engine himself on rare weekends when there was something comforting about a problem he could identify with a wrench.
The dashboard clock had been permanently stuck at 2:16 since 2009.
He started the engine. It rattled awake like a grumpy relative. The security gate opened because the license plate was registered, and for once he didn't wait for his driver to climb into the passenger seat.
He drove north.
At first there were endless lights, impatient horns, concrete ramps. Beyond the George Washington Bridge the road opened. He turned off notifications, then switched off the phone. He stopped once for coffee in a paper cup, without recognizing the coffee chain's logo, and drove until wet highways became narrower lanes flanked by dark trees.
At 1:38 a.m., near a town called Alder Creek, the temperature gauge rose.
Grant noticed too late. The heater had turned cold miles earlier. A sweet, metallic smell reached the cabin. Then the engine coughed, and the Volvo rolled onto a gravel shoulder beneath an advertising sign for a feed store that had closed two years ago.
The engine refused to restart.
He sat listening to cooling metal tick in the dark. For three years, he'd had three assistants, two private drivers, and a roadside service that promised help anywhere. Now he couldn't remember the last time he'd changed a tire without someone offering to do it for him.
He took the phone out. One bar appeared, vanished, and returned. The navigation app couldn't load. He found a number on the faded billboard attached to the last gas station he'd passed: ELLIS AUTO & TOWING. Underneath it, someone had painted ALWAYS ANSWERING in red letters.
A woman answered on the fourth ring.
“Ellis.”
“My car broke down on County Route Twelve.”
“Congratulations. You've joined an exclusive club. Mile marker?”
He peered into the darkness. “I don't see one.”
“What's behind you?”
“Trees.”
“Helpful. What's in front?”
“More trees. An old feed store sign.”
A pause. “Bluebird Feed?”
“Yes.”
“That's four miles east of town. What's the car doing?”
“Not moving.”
“I'd gathered that. Did the temperature climb?”
“Yes.”
“Steam?”
“Some.”
“Don't touch the radiator cap. Don't start it again. I'm twenty minutes out.”
Before he could ask the price, she hung up.
Grant got out and stood beside the road. The night smelled of damp leaves and woodsmoke. No sirens, no car horns, nobody asking for his opinion on a merger. For a moment he thought he'd found relief. Then he pictured Sabrina laughing in the study and felt the familiar twist of humiliation.
Twenty-seven minutes later, an aging yellow tow truck came around the bend with its lights sweeping the trees. It pulled up behind his Volvo. A woman climbed down wearing work boots, a heavy canvas jacket, and a knitted cap. Dark hair escaped near her jaw. A flashlight hung from one wrist; a metal toolbox swung from the other hand.
“You the one who described an entire forest to me?” she asked.
He almost smiled. “That's me.”
“I'm Rowan Ellis. You can call me Rowan, and unless that car has opinions, I'm going to ask you to stay out of the way.”
She lifted the hood without ceremony, checked the hoses, and aimed her flashlight toward the radiator. Her motions were precise, not hurried. She had a crescent-shaped burn on her left glove and grease along one cheek.
“You tried to restart it?”
“Once.”
“Good. Once I can forgive. Six times and I'd charge you for being stubborn.”
He watched her inspect a split coolant hose. “Can you fix it?”
“Eventually. Tonight, I can tow it. You got someplace to sleep?”
“Not yet.”
“Tourist?”
“No.” He considered. “Not exactly.”
“Lost?”
“In several ways.”
Rowan looked at him then, properly. Not at his tailored coat or the keys in his hand. At his face. Something seemed to register, but she did not ask.
“Well, Mister Several Ways, there's a motel by the diner. The rooms are clean and the coffee's terrible. Welcome to Alder Creek.”
While she connected the equipment, Grant offered to help. She handed him a flashlight and asked him to hold it exactly where she'd placed it. He held it over her shoulder until his arm began to ache.
“You don't do this often,” she said.
“I used to.”
“What happened?”
“I started paying other people.”
“That'll do it.”
She didn't sound impressed or offended. She sounded interested in whether the strap was secure.
The Volvo rose onto the truck bed with a protesting squeal. As Rowan checked the final hook, a gust of wind lifted the edge of her jacket. Grant noticed a patch stitched near her pocket: ELLIS AUTO, FAMILY OWNED SINCE 1978. The stitching had been repaired by hand.
“What's your name?” she asked.
“Grant.”
“Grant what?”
There it was. A harmless question, the simplest exchange in the world. A name that would change how she looked at him, as names had changed faces all his life.
He thought of Sabrina's laughter and answered before he could stop himself.
“Miller.”
Rowan nodded. “Okay, Grant Miller. Let's get you into town before you freeze.”
He could have corrected himself right then. He should have. Instead, he followed her into the truck.
Inside, the cab was warm and smelled faintly of motor oil, peppermint gum, and coffee. A paper drawing of a lopsided truck had been taped to the dashboard. Its caption read: KEEP GOING, RO. Someone had drawn a tiny heart inside one wheel.
“Your kid?” he asked.
“My nephew. He thinks tow trucks rescue people the way ambulances do.”
“In a way they do.”
“Don't tell him that. He'll want a siren.”
They drove between sleeping houses with porches strung in cheap lights. Grant's world ordinarily measured distance in flight times, not county roads. He watched a gas station with hand-painted signs and a dark bakery window displaying yesterday's pies. The town seemed simultaneously worn down and stubbornly alive.
“You from the city?” Rowan asked.
“How'd you guess?”
“You looked at the tow truck door like you were deciding whether to buy the company.”
“I was reading the lettering.”
“Uh-huh.”
He laughed. The sound surprised him.
At a stoplight that blinked red despite the empty intersection, Rowan glanced toward his coat. “Whatever you drove away from, it won't be any worse by morning if you sleep first.”
He stared at her. “How do you know I drove away from something?”
“Most people heading somewhere know what town they're headed to. You didn't even know the name of this one.”
In the silence, he saw the first thing Sabrina had not seen in months: a man who might need to be asked if he was all right.
They arrived at a narrow garage beside a shuttered hardware store. Across the street, a neon DINER sign flickered in a second-story window. Rowan backed the truck into her bay and switched off the engine.
“I'll look at the damage tomorrow. Leave the keys in the office box. Motel's two blocks west.”
Grant pulled cash from his pocket. “What do I owe you?”
“Tow is one forty, diagnostics tomorrow. You can pay the office in the morning.”
He counted out two hundred. “Keep the rest.”
Rowan looked at the bills, then at him. “No.”
“It's a tip.”
“That's a fifty-eight-dollar tip for doing my job.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Only if you're trying to buy the right not to listen. You've already paid the tow fee once I write the invoice. Keep your money.”
She handed the extra bills back with two fingers, as if returning a mistaken part.
He opened his mouth, then closed it. People almost never refused anything from Grant Callaway. He had forgotten how it felt.
As he turned to leave, Rowan called after him. “Grant?”
He looked back.
“Don't worry about the Volvo. It's old, but that doesn't mean it's finished.”
The garage door rattled halfway down between them.
Grant stood there longer than necessary. He knew she was talking about a car. He also knew that, for the first time in a long while, he'd been glad someone didn't know who he was.
Then the light from the office window fell across a letter pinned to the garage door. GRAYMARK COMMUNITY REDEVELOPMENT, it read. NOTICE OF FINAL ACQUISITION REVIEW.
Below it was a small corporate logo he knew better than his own handwriting.
May you like
Callaway Holdings.
The company he owned had found him even here.
