“Maybe you just want to feel important. Like you want to pretend you’re part of some big sensational story because you don’t have a real life of your own,” I said. Might a little squeeze of lemon over my words draw her out? I thought so, but I repented when she cried even harder.

“You could help me have a real life of my own,” she finally said. “But you’d just hate me for what I did.”

“Why would I hate you? I don’t even know you. In my experience, people who come close, then run away, want someone to run after them.”

Stefan was back now, struggling with the door that had frozen shut in mere minutes. I pushed with all my weight against the inside door panel.

“No,” she said. “I’m not like that. You’ll never find me.” She hung up.

Ah, I thought. You underestimate me.

2

We weren’t even halfway home when the snow kicked up harder. I slowed again to a crawl, the world a featureless dazzle. I was digging my fingernails into my palms to keep alert. We were the only car on the road, or so I believed, until I glimpsed a bright blue smudge gaining on me faster than seemed possible. A break in the cloud around us showed me the river bridge ahead where the road rose high over the sandbars below. Even though it was a four-lane highway, the strange vehicle seemed to take up all the space, and then it swerved, nearly sideswiping us. I jerked the wheel quickly and felt the sickening float of a doughnut spin. Because time seems to drop into slideshow slowness at moments like these, I was able to observe everything—Stefan’s clenched jaw, him not talking because you wouldn’t, you couldn’t, the face of the driver of the other car, which I thought, in some crazy reach, might be Jill. But it was some Unabomber look-alike, a figure in a huge hoodie, a ball cap and mirrored sunglasses, hunched over the wheel. Tense, my arms coursing with electrical prickles, I let him gain the distance, then when he was out of sight, I picked up speed just a little.

“Take a picture of his license plate,” I told Stefan, pointing to my phone.

“I can’t even see the car much less the plate,” he said.