And yet.
There is a sunny confidence about Emma, sitting there on her boucle throne, the lady of another lady’s manor, that all but guts me. I’d bet anything she has one of thosethey’re just jealousmothers. Any time someone was mean to her, any time she wasn’t invited somewhere, she didn’t make the team, she didn’t get what she wanted—her mother, who definitely had Emma young, who probably wears her hair long and half up in a scrunchie, put her arms around her daughter and assured her it was because she was so exceptional, not just in her talents but as a person, that others found her too threatening to include. Emma believes she deserves good things in life not because she has put in the time or effort but because she is good. Some might call thisentitlement, but the older I get the more I think it might be nice, to be so assured of your solid human gold. I would not have what I have if I had a mother like that, but maybe, I’d manage to survive without it. Maybe my magic is a black one.
I smile defeatedly at Emma. “Okay, then.”
Emma slides her hand into the space between us so that we can shake on it. Her skin is cool and dry and her grip loose, as though there was never a need to worry to begin with. Of course things would work out in her favor. This was the outcome Henry needed, and so the relief I feel is mainly tied to that, but also, a little bit, to this tactile reminder that Emma is Emma and I am me. Emma won’t ever feel as low as I do on my lowest days, but then again, there will be few occasions to fly.
The three of us pile into Henry’s runabout and spend the ten-minute ride to the parking lot in companionable silence. The plan is for Emma to drive Campbell’s car to the Albany train station, Henry and I following in Henry’s car, and then one of us will return Campbell’s three-row jetliner on wheels to the parking lot at the lake. We say goodbye and climb into our respective vehicles. As we exit the leafy, unpaved private drive onto a two-lane road, the radio catches a signal and the dim interior of Henry’s Tahoe gooses with a nineties boy-band song I know by heart.
“I’m not attaching myself to anything she writes,” I tell Henry.
“You won’t have to,” he says. “I promise.”
“How can you promise that?”
Before Henry can answer, the treacly chorus cuts out, and the display screen shows an incoming call from an impossible name from my life back in California. Henry ends it with a sharp jab of his pointer finger.
“Your phone must have connected,” he says, staring straight ahead. “Call him back once we are closer to the city. It’s just going to keep cutting out here.”
In the rearview mirror of Henry’s car, there are more mirrors, fastened around the headrests, ostensibly so that Henry can keep an eye on his kids while he drives. Here and there, we pass squat, rundown homes situated next to massive farming structures on sprawls of land so green it makes my eyes hurt. We don’t get green like this in Los Angeles. Trucks and battered SUVs are parked in the driveways, lights on in the windows. The speed limit is only thirty-five. I could open the door, protect the back of my head, roll onto the side of the road, and listen to the stifled voice in my head.Run, it is saying,Iam saying, however faintly. I could say that last night was about doing what I had to do to survive. About Stockholm syndrome. About PTSD. I could convince the authorities and probably my therapist too, and that’s how I would live with myself. But the thought of leaving Henry makes me feel hollowed out and black, drained of a life in color.
I remove my hand from the door handle. There is no green like this in Los Angeles.
Two hours and seventeen minutes after we started, we see our first sign for the Albany-Rensselaer train station. Henry pulls up alongside Emma at a traffic light and rolls down my window, gestures for her to do the same.
“We have to grab some groceries,” he tells her. “Park in the lower lot, and we’ll pick up the car on the way out.”
Emma nods and lifts her hand in a neighborly wave. I flutter my fingers at her. The light turns green. We turn in different directions.
“What’s that about?” I ask Henry.
“I thought you could cook for me tonight, since you turn green whenever I put a plate in front of you.”
“I generally try to avoid blowing through my sodium allotment within the first minutes of waking.”
Henry actually laughs. “Fair.” Up ahead, I see the familiar white font of a Whole Foods sign. But Henry does not slow down.
“What are you doing?”
“We can’t go there.”
“Why?”
“Because they have security cameras. And I don’t want anyone knowing we were in Albany today.”
“But what about the train station? Aren’t there security cameras there?”
“We aren’t going back for Campbell’s car.”
I lean my head against the window. Stare at my excessive green surroundings until my eyes water. I don’t bother asking why we wouldn’t go back for the car. The less I know and all that.
Henry turns on a single-lane state road, driving with a low, underhand grip on the wheel, elbow resting on the window ledge, his fingers pinching and releasing the light-brown hair at his temples. In the back seat our groceries clink and bump into one another. We went to a super Walmart at some point between Albany and the lake, a place with wide mopped floors and ice-cold tomatoes. Now we are two miles to a town called Eggs, according to a green mileage sign approaching in the distance.
“You need to call your husband back,” Henry says suddenly. “This area is good for reception for a few minutes.” He scoots back and hunches over, rooting around in the map pocket before producing my phone. He plugs in the new passcode he’s assigned me, and then the screen opens a portal back to my life.
My husband answers, speaking to someone else. “It’s Faye,” he’s saying to the people he is with. “I’ve gotta take this.” Then, “Hey, babe. Give me a sec.” Some chatter in the background. “Howie and Anne say hi.”
In my peripheral vision, I see the seams of Henry’s fingernails redden on the wheel. Never, in a million lifetimes, would he resort to calling me babe. “Tell them hi,” I say cheerfully. My husband tosses back the greeting on his way out of the conference room where they are probably gathered. I can picture the modern but outdated production office they’ve rented in the financial district of London. Glass walls. Flat, gray carpeting. One of those coffee makers that spits out cappuccinos and doesn’t fully mix the powdered milk.