My Deja Vu Lover (36 page)

  
Perspiration popped out on my face. My fingers cramped around the steering wheel. I peered through the sun streaked windshield.
 
I was driving, unbelieving, numb with fear, my thoughts a mirror of their terrified expressions. There was something different about them and about the automobile but I didn’t know what it was.

  
All I could see, through the turmoil of my fury and horror, were the three pale ovals of their faces, their eyes wide. I saw Dion’s arm flash in front of Ruth’s shoulders as if to hold her back, and Ruth’s mouth formed the scream, No!
 
I saw Ruth’s boyfriend, his hands pressed against the windshield as though he could hold the two autos apart.

  
Laurence tried to grab the wheel and turn it, pulling. Pain shot through my wrists as I tightened my grip. I felt his large hand close over mine on the steering wheel, felt his rough skin. He screamed a
 
string of oaths at me, sound screeching with the tires, anger as hot as the day, my own voice ripping out of me.

  
I tried to bat away his hands, stop us, and my foot jammed down hard on the gas.

  
We sped toward the chrome covered convertible, with three people behind its windshield, Dion behind the wheel, Ruth in the middle, a man on the far side but I couldn’t remember his name.

***

  
He held his hands palm out in front of himself, toward the windshield, and I heard myself screaming, “Tommy!
 
Tommy!”

  
And Graham’s voice shouted, “Look out!”

  
The blue sky disappeared into darkness. Rain pelted the windshield.

  
The headlights in the distance grew larger, the spears of light on the rain-slick road stretched toward us. I could hear it now, the growing whine of the engine, heard the horn ripping through the silence of the woods. Light flickered on tree branches, lit the watery glass in front of me. I couldn’t judge their speed, just the growing size of the lights, the increase of sound.

  
“April! Slow down!”

  
Graham could hang on the wheel, try to steer, but he couldn’t get his leg across the console. He tried, I felt his bare foot hit my leg.
 
He kicked his heel at me. I had to keep my foot on the pedal or I would have no control of the car. Or was that right? I couldn’t remember anything any more.

  
“Stop that!”

  
Which was the gas pedal, which was the brake, I couldn’t remember, knew that I should know by habit but I hadn’t been driving that long. When I’d driven out here, I had automatically put my foot on the right pedal. I hadn’t had to think about it. But now all that was gone, everything I’d ever known about driving. I wanted to find the brake, wanted to slow the car.

  
“Where’s the brake?” I screamed.

  
Graham screamed right back, a string of invectives.
             

   
I couldn’t see the faces in the dark but I could see the shape of the oncoming car. It was Macbeth’s car. I didn’t have to recognize the make or color or year. I knew it was his car because here I was, behind the wheel and with a cheating lover grabbing at me, trying to stop me. This wasn’t the past repeating itself. This was the present exploding, and I had to stop it, stop the repetition.

  
Beyond the headlight glare I could see two people in front, maybe another in the back seat. They were dark shapes, not faces in sunlight. I didn’t need sunlight. I knew every feature of each of those three faces.

  
We shot across the center line, tires shrieking, or was it me shrieking? The car I was driving swerved back to the right as Graham fought with me, pulling on the wheel. Our headlights made crazy jagged lines, catching on near tree trunks, shooting out in lightning streaks between trees.

  
We spun like a top, slid sideways to the left, skidded right.

  
The constant rain had washed rivers of mud across the road, left it clear in spots and slick as oil in others. The headlight beams flared in circles, or it seemed that way, so fast I lost any sense of direction.

  
And all I could think was, not Tommy!
 
Please God, not Tommy!
 

CHAPTER 40

  
They kept coming, those enormous headlights, straight at us. Were they speeding or was I? I tried to find the brake, felt Graham’s bare foot in the way, shoved against him, tried to pull free of his hands.

  
Grasping the right side of the steering wheel with both hands, I pulled down hard, tried to force it clockwise. It seemed tight, stuck, beyond my strength.

  
I froze, staring into the lights, expecting to hear metal ripping metal.

  
The light beams seemed to cross and then the oncoming lights swung away to my left, caught my face in the glare, blinded me.

  
We did a slow motion slide across the road. Our lights picked up the woods and we aimed straight for the wall of fir trees. My foot was on the brake, I was sure now that it was, and I threw all my strength into pushing down on it.

 
 
In my peripheral vision I saw Graham clutching the emergency brake on the console.

  
Didn’t matter. We were past stopping because the tires were floating on mud.

  
We hit the edge of the paving, did a short bounce to the lower roadbed, kept going, and I had this moment of knowing I was going to die.

  
We bumped down gravel and mud into the ditch, the metal sides of the car screeching. The whole car shuddered. Something ripped loose. I clung to the wheel and expected the airbag to explode in my face.

  
Graham hadn’t fastened his seatbelt. He flew away, hit the passenger side door, crashed back face down on the seat. He bounced against the dashboard, then slid under it.

  
The car slowed slightly before it sank into a jungle of ferns and jerked to a stop.

  
That threw me against the steering wheel. I hung there in the seatbelt.

  
No airbags. Or at least, wherever they were, they didn’t work.

  
Dazed, I remained motionless, listening. I heard night sounds, forest sounds. No crashing metal. Nothing but us.

  
Slowly I slid back and braced myself against the seat with my feet on the floor and my hands on the wheel, then turned and looked at Graham. He had slid down below me, his legs folded on the floor, the upper half of his body stretched across the passenger seat. Lifting his head, he looked at me, speechless for once.

  
There was blood running down his face from a scrape on his scalp. But he was alert, conscious, not crying out in pain. I knew he hadn’t broken anything except maybe every promise he’d ever made to anyone.

  
My breath came in gasps, too fast, and I could feel my heart pounding. Any damage beyond bruises? Slowly I tried to move, flexed joints, turned my neck. Everything seemed to be working.

  
I found my voice and said, “You know what?
 
Back there in that parking area, I thought about backing into your car, knocking it over the edge. It would have gone down the path and flattened you.”

  
Graham stared, wide-eyed. Didn’t make a sound.

  
“Know why I didn’t? Because you aren’t worth breaking a fingernail for,” I said.

  
And then I started crying again and calling him every obscenity I could think of.

  
“My God, what were you thinking?” he whispered.

  
“I wasn’t. I never thought. If I could think, I’d have seen right through you the first time we met.”

  
I started to say more and then I remembered the only people who mattered in all this.

  
Grabbing the seat belt clasp, I punched at the release button, shook it, tore at it, screamed at it. I needed to get out right now and get up there on the road. We hadn’t collided, I’d have heard that. Mac must have steered out of the way.

  
His car must have gone down the other side of the road. I didn’t know how deep the ditch was on that side or how hard they hit it. And I didn’t hear anything at all. No one calling or screaming.

  
Terrified, I shrieked at the seat belt, tried to scoot down so that I could crawl out from under it.

  
The door on my side opened slowly, then faster, and then hands reached in, caught me, and I burst into tears all over again.

  
“I can’t get this seatbelt to open!”

  
Tom leaned across me, paused, turned, so close his eyelashes brushed my face. All I could see were those large dark eyes. “You okay?”

  
“Yes, get me out!”

  
“Right away,” he said and I heard the snap, felt the belt drop away.

  
His arms went around me, lifted me out until we were standing free of the car, knee-deep in ferns. They were all around me, Mac carrying most of my weight, Tom hanging onto my arm, Cyd pulling Tom, until we stumbled up out of the ditch and onto the road.

  
Mac’s car was parked on the other side, pulled over neatly, no sign of any damage.

  
Right, lucky car, it had Macbeth for a driver and whatever needed to be done to avoid a collision, he’d done it.

  
We started across, everyone asking if I was all right, me saying yes, yes, between sobs and then Tom stumbled, almost fell, and I remembered his injured leg.

  
“You shouldn’t be out here. You’ll wreck your knee,” I said and tried to stop crying.

  
“I’m not the one driving into ditches,” Tom said and he sounded almost cheerful.

  
Macbeth said, “Is there anyone else in the car?”

  
I nodded and he let go of me, turned and ran back across the road. Tom hung onto me. I wasn’t sure which of us was holding us up. Cyd ran around us and grabbed my other arm and we continued to stumble toward Mac’s car.

  
Macbeth caught up with us a minute later and said, “He’s out now, says he’s okay. Nothing we can do about your car tonight, Tom. We can call the wrecker in the morning.”

 
 
“Sure, leave it,” Tom said. “Let’s head home.”

  
We walked together, the four of us, back to Macbeth’s car, everyone asking if I was all right. Oh yes, I’m fine, maybe a few bruises, I kept saying, but I was shaking so hard that the only thing that kept me standing was Tom’s arm around me.

  
They all must have been thinking furious thoughts and biting their tongues.

  
My throat was raw from screaming at Graham.

  
I rasped, “What are you doing here?”

  
“We couldn’t find Graham’s address,” Cyd said.

  
“You stole Tom’s car, babe,” Macbeth said.

  
“She borrowed my car,” Tom said.