Chapter Text
The highway lamps sweep their light across the windshield in broad orange bands. As they near the border, the walls of evergreens and hickory trees on either side of the interstate become sparse, then gaping, as the south Georgia underbrush thins out to a few straggling tufts of long brown grass. Eventually the tall green trees fall away altogether and there's nothing but a few skinny palms and gnarled elm trees with long Spanish moss weeping from their branches. A rundown sign on the side of the road with a spiked orange sun and a plastic dolphin welcomes them wearily to Florida.
The clock on the dashboard says it's four am.
Beside him, Susan shifts in her seat. He thinks she's sleeping, her breath is so deep and even, so he's surprised when her voice peels back the silence in his old pickup truck.
"Where are we going?"
Her eyes are large and cat-like in the dark, two static gold-green reflections inside the shadows that shift across her face with the changing light. He sees them even after he looks away, projected out on the horizon.
He blinks twice. "Somewhere they won't follow us."
"Oh," she whispers. There's the dull tha-thunk as the truck hurtles over a lip in the road, and then the roar of tires driving fast on smooth concrete. A newly paved portion of the interstate. He hears her thinking.
Will she understand?
There they are again, her eyes up ahead on the horizon.
"When?" she asks. Her voice is calm but faint. She's looking out of her window up at the sky.
He evades the question with one of his own. "Do you want to rest first?"
"Yeah," her voice is even fainter. "That'd be super."
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They check into a motel, only fifty-five rooms. The Orange Motel. The bleary-eyed desk attendant accepts their cash through a slot in the bottom of the plate glass window, beside a sign that says they don't carry denominations large than fifty dollar bills and another that says all guests must present a photo ID. He doesn't, and the attendant never asks for one. Through a cluster of pin-sized holes further up the plate glass, the attendant tells them there's a breakfast buffet from eight to eleven, four-ninety-nine for guests, two-ninety-nine with an AARP card and free for children.
They don't have any luggage, which makes the single-file trudge up the flight of metal stairs an easier one. His hand on the small of her back guides her wilted body to the door marked 445, over the threshold, across the thread-bare shag and into bed. He sets the window unit to cool and pulls the thin quilted blanket over the both of them.
How long they sleep he's not sure. They wake up almost every hour, using their trembling fingertips to touch each other's lips and eyelashes, while they whisper different excerpts from the same story. The one about their life together. What sort of house do they have - a thatched hut in Fiji - what sort of work do they do - not a bit, but fish for lobster when they care to, and paint little seashells to look like famous people and former presidents to sell to tourist (he loves how strange she is) - how many children do they have - ten, or fifteen even, so many children they can't keep count, naked and brown-skinned from the sun, always laughing.
He can picture it perfectly: Susan, tan and bare breasted, swinging his babes in a hammock between two coconut trees. A thatched roof hut with lines of fish drying beside it and his schooner pulled in from the tide. The rattling hum of the air conditioner becomes the sound of the ocean rushing over the warm white sand of his home, of his memory, and he's there in the place he's always longed to be.
He's home.
"Should we go then, love?" he asks, his voice thick and sluggish around the lump in his throat.
Tears are dripping from her lashes onto her cheeks and down her neck. They turn the orange pillowcase under her head a deeper, redder color.
A sunset on the beach. Yes, they've lived to see the sun.
She nods.
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Housekeeping finds them tucked together under the quilt like sleeping children, holding hands with fingers laced together. There's no note, just a single syringe on the peeling nightstand and the air conditioner turned up all the way. It's so cold that the sheriff's teeth chatter, and the coroner wears two coats as he gently peels apart their bodies.