She seemed to lose the ability to see or hear Reed. His shirts went unwashed even as Pip seemed to always have clean clothing. Meals that had once been steak and potatoes were now macaroni and cheese or chicken strips. And when it came to sex, although they slept in the same bed, they may as well have been in different rooms.

The final straw came when Pip was three. Reed had been at the bar when he met a woman named Carla. She was going through a divorce—her second—and couldn’t seem to get enough of Reed. She squeezed his biceps, and licked her lips as she told him that he was the kind of guy most women were dying to meet. Reed could have taken Carla to a motel if he had wanted to. Instead, he went home to a woman who could barely look at him.

Why the hell didn’t Sandy see him the way other women did? Why didn’t she want to squeeze his arms or look into his eyes with admiration? He was tired of being treated like trash in his own home. He was tired of being second behind a three-year-old child.

The song ended and Reed looked into his rearview mirror as a pair of headlights pulled him from his memory. He turned off the radio to concentrate. Was it a squad car? No, they wouldn’t be so far back. They would do like he used to do and drive up close to get a plate number. They would stay close enough to unnerve him, create a reason for a stop.

So it could be coincidence, but then again it might not be. He sped up slightly to increase the distance between them and it appeared that the headlights kept pace.

Reed knew those roads well. There were dozens of little trails cutting off the highway heading back to cabins or deer stands. He was approaching a curve that would hide him long enough to pull onto one. Then he could see if the car was following him.

The headlights disappeared as he rounded the curve and he cut sharply to the left, pulling onto a dirt trail and driving fifty feet into the woods before shutting off his engine and lights.

The vehicle passed by, although from that distance he could tell very little about it. It appeared to be an SUV, but what make or model he had no idea. He could discern no particular color, although he thought he saw a flash of red, maybe maroon. He searched his memory and could think of no one he knew that owned a red or maroon SUV.

After the car had passed, he exited his Tahoe and walked to the highway in time to see the taillights disappear in the distance. He gave thought to what had happened and could think of only two explanations. The first was that the car had been behind him by random chance, just another vehicle traveling the same route. The second was that someone was following him.