The road looked different from the driver’s side of the car. More control. She’d been a good navigator on their road trips, checking the route on the map, and calling out the exits well before they’d need to veer off. Edward, on the other hand, was a terrible navigator.

Once, and only once, she’d asked to drive part of the way back from Fair Haven. And, twice, Edward said, “Take that exit, back there,” after she’d passed the exit. After the second time, she’d pulled over into the gravel shoulder and slammed the gear into park. She got out of the car, slammed the door, and stomped around to the passenger side and whipped open Edward’s door so fast that he fell out onto the gravel.

It’d almost evened things up for Vivian, who hadn’t even bothered to suppress her smile, winking at Charlotte, whose eyes and mouth were a shocked trio of O’s against the back window. But Edward dusted himself off, readjusted his glasses, and walked around to the driver’s side without a word. She considered afterward that that might have been Edward’s plan all along, to give her late instructions just to get himself back in the driver’s seat. But, no matter.

She was the good navigator, and felt sure that she could make the seven-hour trip just fine on her own. Her little anxieties about dealing with people along the way, without the backup of her husband, were just that. Little. After all, she knew people. She’d be willing to bet that Albert Hixson had pocketed the money she just gave him back at the Sunoco, instead of putting it in the till. She knew people, that was for certain.

And how, exactly, had she not known the people (person) in her own life? she wondered, as the light gray of the winter sky almost blended into the endless stretch of snow-covered fields along Akron Road. The woman who prided herself on her keen understanding of people and their personalities. Ha. That was rich, now, wasn’t it? She wondered if she’d have been any smarter about it if she’d had the chance to finish school. It always weighed on her, the education she’d missed.

The seven hours were long ones, and with no one in the car to talk to, Vivian fiddled with the radio until the static broke and a song came through, or in the long stretches between radio signals she’d talk to herself, noting things she passed on the drive: cars, farmhouses, wildlife. It seemed the only wildlife out at this time of year were crows, cawing and flapping up out of the tops of the naked trees of the woods that lined the snowy highway.

Four and twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie, Vivian thought.

Now, there was something she hadn’t tried baking. Blackbird pie. She thought about baking for a few more miles, and then began singing softly. When she realized there was no one in the car to tell her to keep it down, she sang loudly and lustily, laughing at herself when she couldn’t hit the high notes, “my arms wound ’round you tight,” and her voice would squeal or knock mightily against the wrong notes. If a car was passing the Buick in the other lane she’d rush to clamp her lips shut and try to sing without moving them, like Edgar Bergen with Charlie McCarthy, but then as soon as the car was out in front of her she’d go back to full volume, holding the notes until her ears were ringing. “And staaars fell on Alabama laaaast niiiight.”