I repeated this a few times as I walked through the bungalows. Each time, I changed how I emphasized my name. I tried the sentence as a question, too, wondering if a question mark had ever been considered instead of a period. It was a sentence my husband, Bobby, had written on the third page of his journal. I don’t know why I picked it up and flipped through it, but I wasn’t sorry.

Route 395 along the Eastern Sierras is my favorite drive in California, because it is both desolate and alive with people looking for an exit from their lives. I had done it before—alone and not—a number of times and was always charmed by the seeming lawlessness of this stretch of California. On the open road I never saw highway patrol or police of any kind, and I could drive well over the limit until I hit a speed-trap town, where I’d go from ninety to thirty-five before I reached the first stoplight or a lumbering RV slowing things down as the road narrowed from highway to Main Street every forty miles or so.

I always found someone to pace with on my drive—usually a pickup truck or some other loner to align myself with. I wondered where they were going and made up stories about a soldier just home or a rancher heading to his land. Always men, because men always seemed to be going somewhere alone. The women I saw were part of family units: passengers in SUVs or drivers for packs of sporty children. I didn’t often see women like me—women heading to an unknown destination, alone.

On my drive this time, near the turnoff to a gas station, a motorcyclist entered the highway. I could tell immediately it was a woman, the way her leather jacket clung to her slim frame. She and I drove side by side for miles and I made up stories about her: tried to answer what might be in the small pack she had tied at the back of the bike, what color her hair was under her helmet, if we were close in age or not. And where she was going and if there was anything stopping her from riding away from her life forever.

When cars slowed her down, I let her slide in front of me. On the road, as we paced each other, she became my ideal, the kind of person I wanted to be. And before she turned off to the road that led to Death Valley, she looked at me and nodded. My heart soared at this acknowledgment. I slowed to watch her become a black speck disappearing on the horizon and imagined that one day I would be able to find freedom, too.

My phone rang, and I looked at the console to see Bobby’s name. I considered not picking up, but after three rings I punched Accept.

“Did you see my texts?”