Hide and Seek

But war is still death. Death made unselective and infectious.

Tonight she'd repelled a minor invasion. But it had cost her. A piece

of her father, a piece of me. And something of herself too. She was

dying. She would always be. Casey could survive, but not intact.

There were some rules she couldn't break. And the best of her was as

vulnerable as the worst.

I drove. Silence thick around us. Eyes fixed to the road in the

headlights as though eyes and lights were one and the same.

I knew she did not want sympathy. I knew she'd talked it through and

then had wrested the confidence back from me again and thrust it away

inside her. In the morning there would be broken windows. The only

evidence that it had ever happened.

I drove. Slow through the little towns and back roads and fast -very

fast- over the long rolling hills between. We saw a doe frozen in the

headlights along the side of the road. The clouds had cleared away and

the moon was bright, the sky filled with stars. I felt like I had a

destination, a purpose, but of course I didn't. The purpose was just

the feel of motion, the car cutting through the night.

We went up through Eastport and Perry and Pembroke, turned south and

drove to Whiting. I was hardly aware of the circle moving in on

itself. To me they were just towns, all familiar and alike.

It was two in the morning when we started heading back to Dead River.

The roads were empty. We hadn't seen a car for miles. At West Lubec

we went over a wooden bridge. We passed a little country church, bone

white and bleak with disrepair.

"Stop here," she told me.

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