Mile Marker 47

The Old Road doesn't care where you're going. It only cares that you're on it.

She noticed the figure at mile marker 47, which she would remember later because of the small irony that 47 had been her mother’s age when she died, and because the brain files these things in the wrong order when you are frightened.

The figure was standing at the edge of the tree line, not on the shoulder, not near the road, just at the place where the headlights stopped making sense of things. It was a woman. Or the shape of one. Arms at her sides, face turned toward the highway. Not waving. Not walking. Standing the way things stand when they have been standing there for a long time.

Mara did not slow down.

This was not cruelty. This was Florida.