Read Lifelines: Kate's Story for Free Online Page B

deliberately. She must have been
doing at least sixty, suicide on this road. She’d felt the cold, heard the
engine complain. Black ice, freezing air over wet pavement. She’d closed her
eyes.
    God,
get me out of this. She’d been saved from her own suicidal night-driving by a God she wasn’t sure
she believed in.
    She
reached for the key, wasn’t surprised when the engine failed to respond.
    Shift
lever.
    She
pulled it into neutral, turned the key again.
    The
Subaru’s engine purred.
    The
oak tree blocked out the sky. Certain death, that tree. She should be dead.
    When
she pulled the car into gear, she heard wheels crunch on the ground.
    Hesitantly,
the Subaru crawled through the field grass onto the road. Moved so slowly over
the pavement that she realized something must be seriously wrong with the
engine. She was driving at Socrates’ old-dog speed, the wheel gripped tightly.
If she had any sense at all, she would stop and call for help on the cell
phone.
    Can’t
talk; can’t fumble the auto club card from her purse.
    Car
won’t move.
    Foot
on the accelerator. Her foot ... she needs to push harder.
    The
Subaru shifts from a crawl to a slow glide.
    Not
so fast ... don’t forget the ice.
    Someone
laughed. Must be her. She was alone on the upper highway, in no fit state to
drive. The car wouldn’t go because she hadn’t pushed the throttle. Go slow,
Kate. Very, very slow.
    She’d
pointed the wrong way, car moving south, Bellingham city lights looming against
the sky. Home was behind her.
    She
eased the Subaru over the peak of the hill. So cold. She saw a light ahead and
crawled to the side of the road. Speedometer ... twenty miles an hour. Don’t
hurry, drive very carefully.
    The
light resolved into the sign above Ernie’s Motel.
    Closer
... she read the word Vacancy .
    She’d
gone far enough for tonight.

    W hen
Mac switched on the power in the small room behind his office, the bed emerged
naked, navy stripes painted onto once-white mattress fabric.
    He’d
last slept here a little over two years ago, when he’d moved back into this
cramped room for the two weeks preceding his marriage. He’d wanted Rachel to
feel at home in his house, not a newcomer or a stranger, so he’d insisted she
move in two weeks before the wedding. He’d moved out, which Rachel said was
crazy. After all, they’d been sleeping together seven months, and she’d stayed
over on several occasions.
    But
he wanted the marriage to be right. Rachel called him old-fashioned. He didn’t
know what constituted old-fashioned; how could he, when he’d learned his life
skills in construction camps?
    He
worried that he was fifteen years older than his wife, that he’d never
witnessed a functional marriage. He wasn’t sure Rachel knew the formula for a
working relationship either; her mother had died when she was twelve.
    Mac
vowed they’d do it right. It seemed to him that for a marriage to mean
something there should be a distinct border between before and after the
wedding. He created the division by resisting Rachel’s suggestions they live
together, by staying away from her for those two weeks before the wedding.
    His
cell phone rang while he was still glowering at the bed. He resisted the
impulse to answer. Who could the caller be but Rachel, and what could he say to
her? If the bank hadn’t called to say her checking account was overdrawn, he
would never have looked through her bank statement—and if he hadn’t, she would
never have told him about the pregnancy. And no, he hadn’t forgiven her.
    He
shut off the cell phone mid-ring and yanked open the closet. No bedding, just
the coveralls he used to work on his vehicles. The building business was good
enough he could hire a garage to do his repairs, but he’d lived most of his
life in places bare of conveniences and he’d learned to do for himself. Habit
and pride dictated he look after his own equipment.
    Where
the hell had he put the sleeping bag he’d once used for