Chapter 3 - Smoke On The County Highway
I didn't agree to anything out loud. I just didn't walk away when he asked for five minutes after my shift, and that was enough for him. He went back to the corner booth and ordered coffee he didn't drink, and I finished my tables with hands that wouldn't stop shaking. The white cup on table six sat cold. I kept seeing his watch catch the light every time he lifted it.
My name is Emma Carter. I was twenty-eight and working doubles at the Starlight Diner off Route 9.
By eleven-forty the cook killed the grill and Marisol counted her tips twice. I wiped down the counter and tried to keep my breathing normal. The man — he'd told me his name was Julian Cross — watched me from the booth without staring. That made it worse. I kept thinking about that night because he was making me look at it again, and I hadn't looked at it straight in three weeks.
It had been a Tuesday. I remembered because I'd swapped to close for Denise and I was driving home just after midnight on the county highway past the Miller Road exit. No streetlights out there, just my headlights and the center line. Then I smelled it before I saw it. Burned rubber and hot oil. Around the curve, headlights pointed wrong into the ditch — a black sedan on its side, driver's side down, smoke pushing out from under the hood.
I pulled onto the shoulder and left my car running. My hands were already slick on the wheel. I remember the ticking sound the cooling metal made, and the high grass wet against my sneakers. The windshield was cracked white at the corner. Inside, he was hanging sideways against the seat belt, blood on his forehead, not moving at first. Then he coughed.
I yelled that I was calling 911 and fumbled my phone out. No bars. One bar that dropped. I went to the passenger side because that door faced the sky. I climbed the side of the car and pulled. It didn't move. The smoke got thicker, sweet and chemical, and I could hear something dripping and hissing underneath.
I found the tire iron in my trunk. I don't remember deciding to get it. I remember the weight of it and hitting the upper corner of the passenger window twice before it shattered inward. I reached in and cut my forearm on the glass — I still had the thin pink line — and unclicked his belt while he half-fell onto the door and the roof. He was heavier than he looked. I got my arms under his shoulders and dragged.
We went maybe twenty feet into the grass before the first real flame licked up from the engine. He was coughing and trying to sit up, saying something I couldn't make out. I asked if anyone else was in the car and he shook his head. I sat with him until his breathing evened out and the fire stayed small, just smoke and a lick of orange.
Then I heard the sirens far down the highway. And I thought about Lily staying with my mom, about the custody check Carla's lawyer had threatened that same month, about how I'd left her overnight to work and how bad it would look — my car at a wreck at one in the morning, my name on a sheriff's report. It was selfish and fast and I knew it even then. I told him help was coming, I left my jacket over him because he was shaking, and I drove away before the lights came over the hill.
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At work the next day Marisol asked why I was late clocking out and why my arm was bandaged. I said I'd pulled over to check a flat and cut myself on something in the trunk. She didn't push. I never told anyone else. No report had my name. That was why no one came to thank me. That was why he had to come find me himself.
The diner door chimed and pulled me back. Julian was standing by the front window now, waiting with his coat over his arm, watching the parking lot like he'd been doing it for years. My shift was over. My apron was in my locker. Outside the glass the night was cold and empty except for our cars.
