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.

Now she has a weapon. It’s not exactly Thor’s hammer, but it’s something.

She slides low in the seat. Better that someone passing doesn’t get a glimpse of her and realize she’s a woman alone. Unless he’s a highway patrolman, of course. A patrolman will stop whether he sees someone in the car or not. In fact, where is Mr. CHiP? He’s overdue.

For a while, she shivers, but gradually her body heat dries some of the rain from her clothes. Anyway, it’s a chilly night, but it’s not really, really cold.

As forty minutes pass without incident and as her shivering subsides, she begins to be mildly amused by her moment of alarm. The tire iron resting against her seat and angled into the footwell is an awkward weapon. She was never good at softball, can’t imagine swinging hard enough to knock a would-be assailant out of the park.