Rearview
Some things don't stay behind you.
He hadn’t driven in years.
Not since the accident. Not since the road outside Tallahassee reached up and took something from him. But here he was, behind the wheel of his father’s old Monte Carlo, gripping cracked leather and staring at a dashboard soaked in the ghost-smell of cigarette ash and old sweat.
The engine turned over like it had been waiting.
He pulled out onto Route 90 heading west. The sky was loud with color, burning orange at the tree line, purple higher up, the kind of sunset that looks painted by someone who’d never seen one. The road stayed quiet. Too quiet for a Friday. He passed a Shell station. Saw the same cracked pump island, the same dead Pepsi sign. Passed it again three minutes later.
He checked the odometer. The numbers hadn’t moved.
“Great,” he muttered. “Here we go.”
He hadn’t slept much. Not since Lisa disappeared.
