Inland, lights glimmer high in the hills, too far to walk to them. Through the screening storm, she can see no lights to the west and assumes there aren’t any homes in the vicinity. If you’ve got to break down, always do it in the equivalent of the Hindu Kush or the Australian outback, where it’s so much more adventurous.

“There’s a horse ranch to the south, along the coast,” David tells her from the back seat of the car. “Go to the horse ranch, go now, quick,” but she does not hear him. A sudden coldness on his forehead steals his voice from him, and he is no longer in the back seat, but once more behind Emily’s eyes.

The lack of a heater isn’t a problem. She’s warm enough. She wouldn’t mind some music, but there’s no way to get any. She has a bottle of water and a PowerBar. She’ll be all right. Tough it out. It’s not like being shipwrecked on a desert island, not going to have to live on coconuts and raw rats for a year, not going to have to drink her own urine or anything like that. Suck it up, Carlino.

Maybe it’s premonition or perhaps the fierce and unrelenting storm is getting on her nerves, but slowly her sense of isolation becomes a sense of danger. She’s a stranger to paranoia, an eternal optimist. When she was a child, her mother called her Little Miss Sunshine. Fortunately never in front of other kids. Little Miss Sunshine could use some sunshine now. But she’s okay. She’s been through worse. She’s not a fragile snowflake. By the time an hour passes, however, she is deeply uneasy. There’s seldom lightning in storms along this coast, but of course tonight the sky crackles with fireworks, layering on the atmospherics, so the damsel in distress will be sure to feel adequately distressed. There’s zero chance that a bolt will strike the car. Zero point zero. Isn’t that right? What does your degree in American literature tell you on that subject? Did Twain or Hemingway or Philip Roth have anything instructive to say about the perils of lightning? Anyway, she’s sitting on four rubber tires, well insulated from shock. Yet she feels increasingly threatened. She’s seriously annoyed by this apprehension. It’s not who she is. She’s pissed off at herself for being a nervous Nellie. However, there’s nothing she can do about it. It is what it is. No point spanking herself. Spanking never worked when her mom did it back in the day. Psychologically, she is spankproof.

She plucks the key from the ignition, throws open the door, scrambles out into the rain. She hurries around to the back of the Buick and pops the trunk lid and retrieves the tire iron: a lug wrench on one end, pry bar on the other. When she gets back into the driver’s seat, she’s seriously wet, although not soaked to the skin.