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Dedication

For my uncle Augie

Epigraph

Tell me this is the future,

I won’t believe you.

Tell me I’m living,

I won’t believe you.

—LOUISE GLÜCK

1

The hill is steep here, and there is no guardrail above the river. I think I am being careful, keeping a light touch on the wheel, feathering the brakes. But then I come around the curve and see the spiked objects scattered across the asphalt in my headlights. They look like barbaric versions of children’s jacks. Or medieval caltrops laid on battlefields to maim horses—except that these hunks of metal have been welded from box nails and placed here for the malign purpose of blowing out automobile tires.

The front wheels of the Jeep run over the first of them before I can react, and the sound is like two muskets being fired in tandem. The wolf dog in his enormous crate in the rear lets loose a strangled yelp. And now the back tires are bursting, too, and the steering wheel tugs one way, then the other, and when I pump the brake pedal nothing happens because I’m going too fast. I am over the edge before I can exhale.

I feel the drop in my stomach. The high beams touch the frozen river a microsecond before the vehicle itself does, crashing into and through the ice with such violence that the engine block lurches under the hood. The airbag bursts like an outsized puffball in my face. My lungs let go of their oxygen. And icy water rushes up around my legs to pierce my groin.

The cold delivers a body blow, the assault fiercest upon my heart. My breathing becomes rapid-fire, insufficient to my lungs’ needs.

Because fear moves faster than thought, I experience the panicked recognition of what has happened—of what is happening—as scalding heat along my scalp. Then neurons flash inside my brain. And I am fully awake to my predicament.

My first thought is of Shadow, trapped inside his kennel.

The danger to me registers as a secondary concern—except as a scolding voice inside my head.

Bowditch, you idiot.

I’d taken the blind curve too fast. Should have known better than to pump the brakes when the tires detonated. Shouldn’t have tried steering through the blowout. Not that my mistakes matter now.