"I haven't been around the way I should've," Dad says then. "And I won't be around the way you need me to be. But take this money, you hear me? And if you do need me, you can come find me here."
2
The truck's horn blasted. The baby screamed. Tori didn't, only because she had no air, no breath to scream. All she could do was gasp and brace herself.
The impact was worse even than she'd anticipated. In the minute and a half between first seeing the headlights and when the truck hit them, she'd somehow imagined death as a sudden silence. Instead, it was the shriek and clash of metal and glass, the squealing of tires and over and over again and that blasting, blaring horn. Incredibly, although there was no way she should've even had time to think of it, her brain filtered memories of a story in a book her father had given her about an ancient sea creature calling to what it believed was its lost love. That's how the truck horn sounded to her. Long and loud and bleating, full of despair.
The entire station wagon shuddered, sliding on the ice. The rig must've clipped the front bumper, shoving the car into the ditch along the side of the road. Glass shattered. The truck kept going.
In seconds, everything was dark and quiet again. Crushed against Tori's chest, the baby wasn't even crying anymore. She needed light, but the car had stalled, the dashboard's gleam had gone out, and here in the middle of fucking nowhere there weren't any street lamps. She rocked the baby, trying to keep herself calm. Trying to see if anything hurt, but shit, everything already hurt and she couldn't tell if any of it was new aches or pains or bruises.
The truck had hit them and kept going. What kind of asshole did that? Tori pressed her lips together to keep herself from sobbing out loud, trying to convince herself they were lucky the truck had only dinged them instead of crushing them.
She needed to figure out how bad the damage was. She needed to get her car out of this ditch. She had to get to her dad's house, to get the baby settled. Take a long shower. Sleep in a real bed, or at least just lie in one while the baby endlessly nursed and slept and shit and screamed.
She needed...goddamn it. She needed so many things, and then she couldn't hold back the tears any longer because damn, it had been one tough fuck of a year.
Lots of times in her life Tori had kept herself from weeping because tears solved nothing, but now she couldn't stop herself from sobbing. Three harsh bursts of grief tore out of her before she covered her mouth with both hands, forcing herself to stop. The inside temperature of the car had dropped several degrees since the engine had cut out. They might freeze to death in here before morning, if she didn't get it started again. And in order to do that, she had to stop blubbering and get into the front seat.
The thought of trying to heave her tortured, battered body over the bench seat was too much. She'd have to go outside again. Tori settled the baby, still wide awake but content at least for now, back into the car seat and fumbled the latches closed. The diaper would need changing soon, if not already, but she was no good at it with full light and four extra hands. She wasn't about to attempt that in the dark. She got out of the car, slipping again on the ice and plunging into snow up to her hip. Instant, freezing wetness. She was not going to give up or give in, though. She couldn't do that. For the first time in her life, Tori had someone else to think about besides herself.
Outside the car, she paused for a moment to look up, up, at the stygian void of the night sky, unbroken even by a single star. The wind nibbled at her as though searching for the perfect place to take a bite. Her skin stung instantly in the frigid air, but for those few seconds, Tori let herself appreciate the enormity of that blackness. You could lose yourself in a night like this, and how many times had she wished to be lost? A lot. Not any more, she told herself fiercely. She couldn't ever let herself be lost again.
There, through the trees, a light. Steady and warm, welcoming. A house, probably. Some people lived out here in the middle of nowhere, though usually they were closer to the road. Well, it wasn't like she had any idea of where she was, actually. She'd been following a crumpled and faded handwritten list of directions her father had given her five years ago, long before she'd ever thought she would need them.
The sudden chatter of her teeth forced her to yank open the driver's side door and get back behind the wheel. The car had canted sideways, front tires in the ditch, but the station wagon was huge and heavy and had fought its way through mud and snow several times before when other, lesser vehicles would've been stuck. She thought she'd be able to back it out, if only she could maybe rock it a little.
She couldn't.
Patience, Tori counseled herself silently, with teeth gritted to keep them from chattering. Hands gripped so tight on the wheel they'd gone numb. The slow, steady and grinding burn between her legs had flared and faded, but she desperately needed to get to a restroom and change her supplies. Nobody had told her giving birth would turn her lady bits into something Frankenstein's monster would've screamed and run from.
She almost gave up when the station wagon stalled, but she cranked the key again and pumped the gas pedal gently, the way her father had taught her to do so she wouldn't flood the engine. When she did, the single working headlight brightened, then dimmed as something in the engine squeaked and complained. She rocked in her seat, though of course that did nothing to help move the car and only sent more ripples of pain through her.
The car was stuck; there was nothing she could do about it. She had no phone, not even a burner that she could've used to dial 911. She had a small backpack of samples and supplies they'd given her in the hospital and little more than that. She’d stopped at a rest area and bought cheeseburgers, fries, soft pretzels, withered hotdogs from a rolling cooker. She’d eaten all of it in the past few hours as she drove. All she had left was a box of granola bars and two bottles of water. She had no gloves. No winter boots or hat. The baby had some blankets, but no snowsuit. Tori also had a couple of stretched out bungee cords and several of those metallic emergency blankets along with a couple of thin plastic ponchos, all of them folded into small squares that once opened would be impossible to return to their former shape. The old station wagon was not equipped with a first aid kit, and if there was a pair of jumper cables or a jack and a spare tire somewhere in the back, she'd have been surprised. Dad had warned her never to get on the road without being fully prepared, and she'd done a shit job of following his advice.
They were going to die out here. Frozen. There was a half tank of gas in this behemoth, but the car burned gas like kindling and even the meager heat coming out of the heater would be gone in a few hours. By morning they'd be dead.
And would that be such a horrid thing? She glanced in the rearview mirror, although all she could see was the dark lump of the car seat. The baby had fallen silent. At last sleeping? For a few minutes, at least.
She could slip outside and stuff something into the tailpipe. Keep the car running. Then they'd both fall asleep and simply never wake up. It would be a mercy and not selfishness, wouldn't it? The baby would never have to struggle through life the way Tori had. Failing at everything. Being used. Let down. Abandoned, over and over again.
Dozing, Tori let herself droop forward until her head pressed the steering wheel. It was not a comfortable position. She would be so much better off if she stretched herself out along the front seat. The chill gust of air blowing now against her ankles wouldn't be so bad, then. She could grab a few minutes of rest, surely she could just....do...that….
Tori jerked awake, her muscles screaming in protest at the sudden tension. She thought she'd heard a voice. A low, muttering rumble, a male voice, words indistinct. Not quite a shout. Tensing, she rubbed at the dent the steering wheel had left in her forehead. She listened, hard, but heard nothing except the in-out whistle of her own breath. She sat up straight, eyes wide to see in the dark.
What was that out there? A shadow twisted and danced. More than one. It was the trees, she told herself, leaning forward, eyes wide
as though she could force herself into having night vision. The wind in the trees, that was all.
Something else moved to the side of the car, then behind it, but there was no crunching of snow, no grit of feet on the gravel. Only more shadows, and though she twisted in her seat to follow their path, all Tori could see was blackness.
The car shuddered as though it were protesting its very existence. Could she blame it? The station wagon had suffered a lot on this trip. Eyeing the gas gauge, Tori whispered some encouragement, but kind words couldn't soothe something that wasn’t alive.
The engine died again, this time permanently. The headlights dimmed, and although that single bulb hadn't thrown much of a glow for more than a few feet in front of the hood, the fresh darkness left her more desperate and anxious than before.
Tori thought of the welcoming glimmer through the trees. The house. She had to get herself and her child out of this car and make her way to that light, and she had to do it before the night got later and whoever was inside gave up reading or watching TV or knitting or whatever they were doing and went to bed, turning off the lamps, leaving nothing for Tori to guide herself by. She had to bundle up her baby and get out of this car and force her way through the trees and the dancing, mocking shadows.
She had to do it now.
A little over a week ago, there was no way Tori could've made it. She'd been the girl who cringed if someone looked at her too hard. The one without a voice. No good at sports, tripped over her own feet. Once she'd been trying on a pair of wedge-heeled sandals in the discount store and had fallen over without so much as taking a step. If there was an edge to hit her knee on or something sharp to snag her clothes, she'd find it.
But less than seven days ago, she'd given birth. No anesthesia. Nobody to offer her ice chips and smooth back her hair, or to help time her breathing. She'd done it all on her own, in the supply closet of her shitty, dead-end job while a soft jazz version of “Enter Sandman” played over and over. Her body had done what it had been built to do, and once the pains had started there'd been no stopping it, no giving up, there'd only been the inevitable forces of nature pushing that kid out of her and into her bloody, waiting hands.
An ambulance ride later, the doctors and nurses had all given her the side-eye about not knowing she was pregnant, and Tori didn't blame them. What sort of moron had no idea she was knocked up, with child, "increasing," as they sometimes said in those old-school romance novels her Auntie Beatrice had been so fond of reading? But it was the truth. She'd had a one-night stand with the guy she'd met during Susie's bachelorette party. Never saw him again. Never even got his full name. Hadn't gone to Susie's wedding either, because Susie had quit working at the convenience store and never sent Tori an invitation.
Tori'd had irregular periods her entire life because of the eating disorder that had also made her hair fall out and her nails split to the quick. She hadn't gained more than ten hard-won pounds the entire pregnancy, because of course she'd binged and purged the fuck out of those nine months, staring in the mirror at the small bulge of her belly and convincing herself another hour on the treadmill and a few hundred sit-ups would put her in a bikini by bathing suit season. Not that she'd ever be seen in a bikini, of course. Ever. Not with the scars.
In some dark corner of her brain she might've guessed about the baby, if she'd allowed herself to think about it, but she never had. Tori had been shit at a number of things in her life -- relationships, work ethic, keeping food down for more than fifteen minutes at a time -- but she'd been very, very good at denial.
"I have to get out of this car," she said aloud, testing out the words like that would make it somehow easier to actually get her ass in gear and do it. "Take the baby. Get to that house. Someone is inside. They'll have a phone. Something."
She had her dad's number, also scrawled on the faded piece of paper along with the address, although she wouldn't have been surprised if it was no longer in service. The idea that he might not even live at the address he'd given her tried to blossom in her mind like one of those flesh-eating flowers, something with sharp edges and sticky, insect-baiting allure, but she shoved it away. Refusing to think about what she would do if she managed to get herself to her father's house and he wasn't there to help her.
"Ok, Little Bit," Tori murmured with a glance in the rearview mirror that showed her nothing but blackness. "Let's go."
3
Easier said than done. Tori had been hovering on the edge of obliteration for days, exhausted, pushing through only by the sheer force of her will and because she'd had no choice. She peered out through the windshield, trying to force herself to get moving.
"In a minute, Little Bit," she murmured, settling a little harder into her seat, pulling her coat up around her throat.
It was too dark for Tori to see her breath, but it must have been misting out of her in long plumes. Her fingers, which had been clenched on the steering wheel, were cramped and numb. She managed to let go with a small wounded noise of her own. She had to do this now, no more stalling or waiting or hoping someone would be along to save her. Nobody ever had, so why should now be any different?
Once more, she got out of the car. This time she went around to the rear to yank open the station wagon's heavy back gate. Most everything had flown around back there when the truck hit them, and she had to crawl almost all the way inside because the vehicle was tilted into the ditch, but she gathered her scant emergency supplies and took them to the back seat.
"Shh, shh," she cooed, unbuckling the infant. It was easier this time, since she'd barely been able to hook the complicated seatbelts back together after taking the baby out to nurse.
It was a good thing she wasn't trying to drive away, not with the baby unsecured in the car seat. The thought of it, hitting a patch of ice and sliding, of running up along a guard rail or being nicked again by a truck going too fast... Tori shuddered and clutched the baby to her chest again. The infant nuzzled, grunting, at her breasts through the coat. The stench of urine drifted up to tickle Tori's nose, though honestly, she'd smelled way worse in the hallway of her last apartment. Even the poopy diapers from this kid weren't as bad as some of the stuff she'd had to step over at three in the morning.
"Gonna get you out of here. Get you safe."
Quickly and not thinking too much about it, because let's face it, the more Tori thought about anything, the more likely it was she was going to fuck it up, she wrapped the baby in the layers of metallic blanket, two plastic ponchos on top, then tucked the infant inside her coat and secured the baby with the bungee cords. They strapped around Tori's shoulders and across her chest in an X, then hooked together. She managed to button her coat most of the way. Then she slung the backpack over her shoulders.
She kissed the baby's downy head. "We're going to have to walk, Little Bit, but I'm going to keep you warm, and I'm going to keep you safe."
Safe in the way Tori’s own mother had never had. Oh, she'd come to the hospital when Tori called her with the news. She'd brought a bag packed with what she'd proudly displayed as Tori's baby clothes. Small, faded and stained rompers and nightgowns embroidered with ducks and lambs. She would take the baby, she'd said. Raise it, since clearly Tori was in no shape to be a mother.
Tori had already met with an adoption counselor who'd shown her an overstuffed binder groaning with pages of eager-looking potential parents. She'd been told she should agree to give up her baby to someone who would surely do a better job than she ever could. But not her mother. Never her mother. Not even if she moved home and allowed her mother to "help" raise the tiny baby girl who'd stared up at Tori with wide green eyes the same shade as her own. In the end, Tori had decided to keep the baby.
It was the first time in her life that Tori felt not only that she had to do something important, but that maybe, just this once, that she could.
Outside, a gust of bitter wind took her breath away. It pushed her against the car, and she turned at the last second to be sure
she hit the metal with her back. Her arms went around the baby strapped onto her front.
"Shh. It's okay."
Her first step sunk her into snow up to her shin. The second did the same. But the third was a little better because she'd managed to get a foothold midway up the ditch. She dug her hands into the piled snow and ice, giving an inadvertent cry at the pain of the cold on her bare skin, but not letting it stop her from digging deep to keep herself moving forward. Up and over the rim of the ditch, she went on hands and knees until she got to her feet.
For a moment, Tori teetered backwards, arms pinwheeling to keep her balance. She closed her eyes, waiting for the fall. The pain. The baby's screams. At the last second she caught herself and pitched onto her knees again. Breathing hard, air whistling in and out of her throat. Burning. She wasn't going to be able to move.
"Get up." The words gritted out of her. "Get up, you stupid, lazy bitch."
It didn't work. Tori had heard those words or similar too many times to be motivated by them. From her mother's husband John. From countless ex-boyfriends. From bosses eager to get a few more hours of work out of her for too little compensation.
"C'mon," she told herself. "You can do this. You got this, Tori."
Never forget, Little Bit. You got a strong heart. You're gonna be ok.
Her father's voice nudged at her ears, loud enough to startle her eyes open. She couldn't recall her dad ever saying such a thing to her; it wasn't really the sort of thing he'd have said. Looking into the darkness, Tori strained for any sign of anyone standing there. She saw nothing, but the trees did murmur in a gust of winter wind that sent shards of cutting chill all through her.