Chapter 2 - The Shoulder of the Road
The tires of the Escalade chewed through the gravel shoulder, throwing gray Kentucky dust twenty feet into the heavy summer air.
Ahead of me, Nora didn’t turn around. She kept walking east toward the county line, her shoulders hunched beneath the canvas strap of that bag of aluminum cans. Her left hand was pressed flat against the twin carrier across her chest, holding those two small bodies secure against the rhythm of her stride.
I killed the ignition. The sudden silence was suffocating, broken only by the tick-tick-tick of the cooling manifold and the high, dry hum of cicadas in the overgrown fescue.
I sat there for five seconds, my knuckles white on the steering wheel, staring at my five-hundred-dollar Italian loafers covered in road dust. I looked in the rearview mirror. Camille was three-quarters of a mile behind me, a tiny white smudge on the shimmering blacktop, holding her phone to her ear. She was probably already calling her father, Julian Ashworth, the man who held forty percent of the financing on the Vance Tower rising in downtown Lexington.
I didn’t care. For the first time in fourteen months, the name Ashworth felt like an anchor I had finally cut from my throat.
I kicked the door open. The heat hit me like the blast from an open furnace—ninety-seven degrees, with ninety percent humidity rolling off the horse pastures. My custom dress shirt stuck to my back instantly.
"Nora!"
She didn't stop. Her boots—an old pair of work boots I remembered buying her four winters ago at the Southern States co-op—dragged slightly in the ditch weeds.
"Nora, stop! Please!"
I ran. My dress shoes slipped on the loose gravel, nearly taking my ankles out, but I caught my balance and sprinted until I was ten paces behind her.
"Nora, look at me."
She stopped. She didn't turn around immediately; she just drew in a long, shallow breath that made the thin fabric of her gray sweatshirt stretch tight against her spine. The sweat had soaked right through between her shoulder blades in the shape of a cross.
When she finally turned, she did it slowly, protecting the sleeping infants tucked against her chest.
Up close, the sight of her nearly brought me to my knees. Nora had always been vibrant—chestnut hair with streaks of copper, honey-gold skin, eyes that could read me from across a crowded room. Now, the hollows under her cheekbones were bruised purple with sheer exhaustion. Her lips were cracked. A smear of dust ran down the side of her neck where sweat had dried and caked.
And in that worn fabric wrap, two babies slept, oblivious to the world. One boy, one girl. Their faces were flushed pink from the heat, their foreheads dotted with tiny beads of sweat. The boy had a cowlick of pale blond hair at the crown of his skull—the exact same cowlick my father had passed to me, the one I spent ten minutes every morning trying to comb down with pomade.
"Get in the truck, Nora," I said, my voice cracking like dry timber. "Just get in the truck. It’s almost a hundred degrees out here."
Nora’s eyes locked onto mine. There wasn't an ounce of fear in them. There was only a cold, ancient distance that terrified me more than Camille’s threats ever could.
"The shoulder is public property, Dean," she said. Her voice was raspy, dry as sandpaper. "Go back to your bride."
"I left her."
"You left me, too," she said simply. "It seems to be what you do when the road gets dusty."
"Nora, look at them." My hands were shaking. I reached toward the carrier, completely on instinct, wanting to touch that tiny tuft of blond hair, but Nora stepped back into the ditch, her body curling defensively around the babies. The bag of cans clattered sharply against her thigh.
"Don't touch them."
"Are they mine?" The question tore out of my throat before I could filter it. It was clumsy, selfish, and desperate.
Nora looked at me for three long seconds. The wind rustled the bluegrass across the fence line. A horse nickered in the distance.
"They're mine," she whispered. "Every fever, every sleepless night, every ounce of formula I had to count pennies to buy—they are entirely mine. You made your choice in our kitchen fourteen months ago, Dean. You don't get to pull over on the highway on your way to your wedding and claim a refund."
"How old are they?"
"Six months."
The math hit me in the solar plexus like a concrete block.
*Six months.*
I had thrown Nora out in late June of last year. Which meant she was barely four weeks pregnant when I dumped her packed luggage on the front porch of our house on Sycamore Lane. She had stood there in the humid twilight while I waved that private investigator's folder in her face, screaming about loyalty, betrayal, and hotel rooms in Louisville.
She had known. Or she was about to know. And she had faced the clinic, the morning sickness, the ultrasound screens, and the labor room entirely alone while Camille Ashworth picked out imported Italian marble for my master bathroom.
"You were pregnant when you left," I choked out.
"I was pregnant when you threw me out," Nora corrected me, her voice trembling now, the iron facade cracking just enough to show the raw meat beneath. "I took a test the morning you called me a whore in front of the moving men. I had the little plastic stick in my pocket while you told me you were disgusted to look at me. I was going to tell you over dinner that night."
She laughed—a dry, horrible sound that died in the heat.
"I decided I'd rather raise them in a car than raise them with a man who could look at a stranger's photos and forget seven years of marriage in ten minutes."
"Nora, please—"
Before I could finish the sentence, Nora's eyes rolled slightly back. Her knees buckled.
The weight of the heavy canvas bag pulled her sideways toward the ditch. The sheer physical toll of ninety-seven-degree heat, dehydration, and carrying thirty pounds of babies caught up with her in a single, terrifying second.
"Nora!"
I lunged forward, catching her by the upper arms before her knees hit the stone. The sheer lightness of her body horrified me; she felt like she was made of dry twigs and linen. My shoulder took the brunt of her fall, and my arms locked around her back, supporting her and the babies all at once.
One of the twins—the girl—woke up and let out a thin, reedy wail.
"I've got you," I gasped, lifting her against my chest. "I've got you. Nora, hold on."
Her forehead leaned against my throat. She was burning hot to the touch—not the heat of anger, but the heat of fever and sunstroke. For half a second, her fingers clutched at the lapel of my custom suit jacket, the familiar grip of my wife from a lifetime ago, before she went limp.
I didn't think about Camille. I didn't think about the Ashworth family, or the fifty-million-dollar tower downtown, or the reporters who were supposed to attend our rehearsal dinner in two weeks.
May you like
I scooped Nora into my arms, keeping the twins protected between us, and carried them toward the idling Escalade.
***
