Lisa Unger - Sliver Of Truth

“Just try to relax. We’ll be okay,” he said, getting into the driver’s seat and shutting his door hard. For a minute I thought he was waiting for a driver, until I remembered the whole left-hand-side-of-the-road thing. He started the car. The engine sounded tinny and weak.

“Do you have some kind of plan?” I asked him as he backed the car out of the alley and drove slowly up a quiet street. A battalion of screaming police cars raced by us in the other direction. He didn’t answer me. I was starting to get this about him. When he knew you wouldn’t like the answer to your question, he just didn’t answer it.

“Just try-not to worry,” he said finally.

His accent was British. Definitely British. Or possibly Irish. Maybe Scottish. I wasn’t good with accents.

“Who the fuck are you, man?” I asked him for the second time.

“Ridley,” he said, resting his eyes on me in the rearview mirror. “I’m the only friend you’ve got.”

He kept saying that. I was having a hard time believing him.

I felt frozen in the sound of the helicopter all around us. Jake pulled me and we kept running along the wall, staying close to the stone. The ground beside us spit and splintered with the shots fired from above. They were shooting at us; I couldn’t believe it. I glanced behind us. The men I’d heard were nowhere in sight. Where were they? The fact that I couldn’t see them made me more nervous than if they’d been at our heels. What if they were corralling us like sheep, if they turned up ahead of us somehow?

“It can’t follow us into the trees!” Jake screamed back at me, pointing to where the wall ended and a thick wooded area began and ran all the way down to the highway. We could move through the sloping tree cover all the way down to the Henry Hudson. His voice sounded like a whisper in the deafening sound of the helicopter, but I heard him and nodded. We ran balls out toward what I prayed would be safety. When we reached the corner where the south wall hit the east wall, he climbed it quickly and then helped me up.

Not easy. I fell once and tried again, finally made it over the top. I think if it hadn’t been for the sheer adrenaline of terror, I never would have made it over at all. I kind of climbed and then fell off the wall on the other side. Jake dropped down more gracefully beside me. We heard the copter retreat but stay close by. We listened. No voices, no footfalls.

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I’m sorry I brought us here.”

“No, Ridley. I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for? You were just trying to protect me,” I said, looking up at him. He dropped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. I turned and wrapped my arms around him, rested my face against his neck.

“I’ve realized something in the last few days,” he said. His voice sounded so grave and serious. “Ridley, I can walk away. It’s nothing more than a single choice. We can both do it. We don’t need all the answers to live our lives. It doesn’t have to be like this.”

He put his mouth to mine and he tasted so good. I could taste all the delicious possibilities of our life together. In that moment, I believed him. I believed he was right.

“If we get out of this,” he whispered in my ear, “I promise you everything is going to be different. I swear to you, Ridley. I swear it.”

We held each other like that until something started to slice the air around us like a razor through fabric. We stood to run but I watched as Jake’s shoulder jerked and red seeped through his jacket, then through his pants leg. He reached out to me as he fell backward. I screamed his name and stretched for his hand. Then I felt a searing heat in my side, fell forward with as much force as if someone had shoved me hard from behind. I saw his face grow pale and still. I tasted blood and dirt in my mouth.

I AWOKE WITH a start and a sob in my throat. The car was moving fast; we were on a highway.

“Is he dead?” I asked.

“Who?” he asked, keeping his eyes on the road. The road was surrounded by blackness. We must have left the city far behind.

“Jake.”

“I don’t know, Ridley,” he said softly.

“Don’t lie.”

“I’m not. I really don’t know.”

THERE ARE ALL kinds of death in this world. The death of the body is the least of them. The death of self, the death of hope-now, that’s the hard stuff.

I’ve never been one to fear my own death. Not that I want to die, of course. I’ve just always seen death as a lights-out proposition. You’re gone. Either it’s the end of you…or it’s a beginning. Either way, I don’t imagine there’s much looking back. I’ve never bought the whole fire-and-brimstone thing, the concept of reward or punishment at death. The idea that a tally has been kept of our good or evil or mediocre deeds, and that the soul is filed away accordingly for all eternity, just doesn’t ring true. Humans judge that way. I tend to think that God probably doesn’t. He or She just keeps doling out the lessons with endless patience until you finally “get it” in this life or the next.

I suspect that grief is worse than death. When someone you love has died, it’s almost impossible to get your head around it. The totality of it, your utter helplessness against it, makes you feel as if you could burst into flames from sheer emotional agony. When Max died, I hurt so much that I couldn’t believe I was still walking around, going through the motions of my life. I actually found myself wishing that a car would hit me or that I would fall from some medium height. It’s not that I wanted to die. I just wanted to be in traction. I wanted my body to be as wrecked as my spirit so I could just lie down and heal.

I’m not afraid to die. I know there are far worse fates.

I was thinking this as Dylan drove on the dark highway and I lay in the backseat.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Someplace where we’ll be safe for a while until we figure out what to do. I need to think.”

“You’re going to tell me what’s going on. Right now,” I said.

No answer. He turned off the highway and pulled onto a small road. There was nothing for miles but darkness, punctuated by the yellow lights of house windows, few and far between and off in the distance. I could smell grass and manure. He made a right onto a narrow dirt road and we drove slowly down a drive edged with tall trees. At the end, there was a dark stone structure. A house. It had the look of emptiness, of abandonment.

“This was my family’s summer house.”

“Was?”

“I don’t have much family left. I guess it’s mine.”

“What about your murdered mother, Agent Grace? All that bullshit you told me in the park. Did Max kill the rest of your family, too?”

He flinched as if I’d slapped him.

“That was the truth,” he said as he got out of the car. “Not the whole truth, but I didn’t lie.”

He opened the door for me and helped me out. I hated having to lean on him. I was dirty and wet and cold. My feet squished in the wet ground. When I lost the strength in my legs, he lifted me off the ground, which isn’t as easy as it looks in the movies.

“Put me down, you asshole,” I said, feeling annoyed and embarrassed.

“That’s the second time you’ve called me that tonight,” he observed, moving quickly toward the house.

He set me down on the stoop and unlocked a heavy wooden door with a key he took from above the doorjamb. Inside the air was musty and cold, like the breath of a grave. I hobbled over to a couch I saw. It was red and dusty, sat beside a matching chair and ottoman. It was stiff and uncomfortable but it was better than standing. There was a simple wood coffee table and a fireplace. A stack of wood sat ready for lighting. I curled up against the cold, stared at Dylan Grace with unabashed hatred as he started a fire, covered me with an ugly beige, stinky blanket. He left my sight and set about clanking around in what I assumed was the kitchen. I drifted off again.