The woman glances over at her husband, but he keeps his eyes focused on the mile markers off to his right. Guiding their car through the growing mist. He tosses the butt of his Pall Mall out through the same fissure that sucked away the match. She sees this, even turns her head to watch the filter as it catches on the edge of the window before being swept away by the breeze. Moving her attention from the window to his ear before continuing.

“People would say, for a long time after that, actually, that she’d met someone in town, a soldier or the like, a traveling man, and had run off with him. Used him, really, as a ride away from us. From Father. That’s what they meant when they whispered that, the people who lived in town—it was ‘her way out,’ they said—but that was never proved. She left no trace, you see, not really, no missing suitcase from the basement or a note or sighting of her at a gas station miles from there. She simply vanished and that was that. ‘Off to the circus,’ my father would say, when he finally felt like discussing it. I take that back, he never felt like discussing anything. No, by ‘discussing’ I simply mean that at some point—months or years later—he would mention her, Sarah, in conversation or at the dinner table and make a comment like that, one of his comments about people, and that was the only way her name was ever mentioned again. My sister.”

The woman floats away again for a moment, her face upturned in the darkness. Searching for some image that seems just beyond her reach. The man drives on, eyes locked on the hood of the car.