"No trouble," Miriam says. She embellishes a bit: "That cocktail kicked her ass."

Frankie pauses.

Shit! Dummy. Don't embellish. Harriet wouldn't embellish.

"You okay?" he asks, suspicious.

"I'm fine."

"You sound different."

"Said I'm fine."

Another pause. "You sound like you wanna do something to that girl. Hurt her, maybe."

"Don't push me."

"Okay! Okay. Jesus, don't get creepy."

Miriam winces, and decides that this is her only shot.

"Where are you at?" she asks.

"We got the trucker. I forgot that he was a big boy. Needed two of the cocktails to put him down, but it worked. Ingersoll's got him in the Escalade, and I'm going to take the truck and go burn it."

"Where you taking him?"

"Ingersoll's got a bug up his ass for somewhere with a little verticality. He says a storm is coming, and he wants to harness its power and, uhh… how'd he put it? 'Read the skies.' We got a line on a lighthouse under construction. I guess they're putting in a new… big giant light, or whatever the fuck it is you need to replace on a lighthouse."

"Where's the lighthouse?"

"Why?"

Fuck! I don't know why!

She clenches her eyes shut, and tries: "I don't answer to you."

"Sorry," he says. "Uhhhh. Barnegat, I think. Long Beach Island. Wherever it is, it smells like dead fish and medical waste."

"I have to go. The girl is waking up."

"Give her a kiss for me," Frankie says.

"Don't be cute."

Miriam hangs up.

She holds the cell phone in her hand. The pain is still present in her body – it's beating her like a drum – but it no longer bothers her. Miriam feels alive. Present in the moment. In the deep distance, thunder clears its throat with an acid rumble.

Taking a deep breath, Miriam strides out to the driveway.

She gets about ten feet, then turns around.

She's in the cottage for thirty seconds.

When she emerges anew, she has the pistol in one hand, her diary in the other, and the cell phone nestled in her pocket.

She starts walking.

THIRTY-SIX

The First Hour

Miriam feels like she's been walking for hours. She checks the phone, and every time it feels like it's five minutes forward, sometimes less.

The gravel road – "road" being the most optimistic term possible for this long stretch of sunken pits and limestone scree – is a straight ribbon through leaning pines and anemic bramble, a ribbon that seems infinitely unrolled. Her steps appear to take her no farther. The adrenalin rush is gone; her muscles stiffen with every step, and a small voice inside her head wonders: Did I actually die? Maybe this is rigor mortis setting in.

The trees have grown over the road, a canopy of skeletal hands. Sparrows and starlings flit from branch to branch. Thunder continues to rumble in the distance.

"Thatta girl," Louis says, walking next to her. "I knew you had it in you. Such a buck-up spirit. This time, you're embracing fate. You know you show up when Louis dies. So you forge ahead. I like the new you. Be a fountain, not a drain, I always say. Be the leaf in the stream that goes with the waters, not the dam that stands against them. Am I right?"