“I’ve wrecked,” I gasped, lifting my forehead. It stung where the steering wheel had carved a deep dent in the flesh. I’d fallen asleep, and the wheel made a crummy pillow, but I thanked God for it anyway. In my dream state I’d wandered off the interstate and found myself puttering at a snail’s crawl through heavy grass, my foot off the gas but the little Nugget engine still demanding to move forward.

I’d not wrecked, I’d fallen asleep and wandered off the road.

I’d been terribly lucky.

I sat up straight and peered over the wheel like a short retiree. Inch by inch I guided my car back onto the road and pointed it straight at the nearest exit. Adrenaline from the close call kept me alert, but even that shock of near-calamity wouldn’t hold for long. It was 3:00 A.M. and I needed sleep badly, regardless of how close to my destination I’d come.

No more silly risks.

The city was near enough that I was not hard-pressed to find a major hotel chain. I left a credit card with an honest receptionist at the front desk (by exhausted accident, not by request), and tucked myself into a room last decorated sometime in the early 1980s. I hung a Do Not Disturb sign on the doorknob and fell asleep before I had time to think too hard about my gently petulant passenger. I decided to come to the conclusion that I’d dreamed her, and any message she delivered sprang from my own unconscious concerns.

Leave it to me to take the easy way out.

I slept until the next morning, though when I checked the big red numbers on the clock beside my head, it was two hours into the afternoon. I didn’t much care. I took my time with a shower and getting dressed, then gathered my things and threw them into the car. Up at the main desk they returned my wayward credit card, which was good of them—I hadn’t even noticed it was missing. I folded my receipt and shoved it in my back pocket as I reached for the glass doors to leave.

Something stopped me—a collection of words at the far corner of my vision, hiding behind a clear door in a small red metal booth. It was just a short phrase, a headline and a grainy photograph that captured my attention. “Police Widen Search for Twice-Escaped Convict.” And beneath the bold black banner was posted an old mug shot of my maniac cousin.

I turned away from the exit and fed enough change into the slot to buy one of the newspapers with Malachi’s face on it. I didn’t read the article right away; I waited until I was safely alone in my car. Even then I didn’t really read the story, I only skimmed it to confirm what the headline had led me to guess. He’d gotten loose, diving out of a second-story window at the courthouse during his arraignment. The police had an idea that he was headed home to Macon. And why not? Who had ever defended him but Tatie? I wondered after his parents. Had I seen them before? Had they been at his trial when I was small?