А Финн - The Woman in the Window

I stood, pulled, staggered backward until we were next to Olivia, then rested him beside her. She stirred. He didn’t. I seized his hand, peeled his sleeve back from the wrist, pressed my fingers into the skin. His pulse was flickering.

We were out of the car, all of us, beneath the sprawl of stars, at the floor of the universe. I heard a steady locomotive chug—my own breath. I was panting. Sweat slid down my sides, slicked my neck.

I bent an arm behind my back, felt carefully, fingers climbing my spine like a ladder. Between my shoulder blades the vertebrae flamed with pain.

I inhaled, exhaled. Watched breath spout feebly from Olivia’s mouth, from Ed’s.

I turned around.

My eyes scaled what looked like a hundred yards of sheer cliff, blasted fluorescent white in the moonlight. The road lay unseen somewhere overhead, but there was no climbing toward it, no climbing anywhere. We’d crash-landed on a small shelf, a little ledge of rock jutting from the side of the mountain; beyond and below, oblivion. Stars, snow, space. Silence.

My phone.

I slapped my pockets—front, back, coat—and then remembered how Ed had clutched it, waved it away from me; how it had spun to the floor, danced there, rattling between my feet, that name blaring on the screen.

I plunged into the car for the third time, swept the ceiling with my hands, finally found it lodged against the windshield, screen intact. It was a shock to see it so pristine; my husband was bleeding, my daughter was injured, my body was damaged, our SUV was destroyed—but the phone had survived unmarked. A relic from another era, another earth. 10:27 p.m., it read. We’d been off the road for almost a half hour.

Crouching in the cabin of the car, I slid my thumb across the screen—911—and lifted the phone to my ear, felt it tremble against my cheek.

Nothing. I frowned.

I ended the call, retreated from the car, inspected the screen. No Signal. I knelt in the snow. Dialed again.

Nothing.

I dialed twice more.

Nothing. Nothing.

I stood, stabbed the speakerphone button, thrust my arm into the air. Nothing.

I circled the car, stumbling in the snow. Dialed again. And again. Four times, eight times, thirteen times. I lost count.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

I screamed. It burst from me, scouring my throat, cracking the night like a pane of ice, fading away in a flock of echoes. I screamed until my tongue burned, until my voice gave out.

Whirled around. Dizzied myself. Hurled the phone to the ground. It sank into the snow. Picked it up, its screen dewy, and flung it down again, farther away. Panic surged through me. I lunged, dug through the frost. My hand closed on it. Shook off the snow, dialed again.

Nothing.

I was back with Olivia and Ed; they lay there, side by side, still, luminous beneath the moon.

A sob kicked its way to my mouth, desperate for air, thrashed past my lips. My knees buckled beneath me, folded like switchblades. I melted to the ground. I crawled between my husband and my daughter. I cried.

When I awoke, my fingers were cool and blue, curled around the phone. 12:58 a.m. Its battery was drained, just 11 percent remaining. Didn’t matter, I reasoned; I couldn’t call 911, couldn’t call anyone.

I tried to all the same. Nothing.

I rotated my head to the left, to the right: Ed and Livvy, on either side of me, their breathing shallow but steady, Ed’s face spackled with dried blood, Olivia’s cheeks plastered with streaks of hair. I cupped her forehead in my hand. Cold. Were we better off sheltering in the car? But what if . . . I didn’t know; what if it rolled? What if it exploded ?

I sat up. Stood up. Looked at the hulk of the car. Surveyed the sky—that ripe moon, that bath of stars. Turned, slowly, toward the mountain.

As I approached it, I brandished my phone and held it in front of me, like a wand. Drew my thumb up the screen, tapped the flashlight button. Hard light, a tiny star in my hand.

The rock face, in the glare, was flat and faultless. Nowhere to jam my fingers, nothing to seize, not a weed or a branch, not a lip of rock—just soil and scree, forbidding as a wall. I walked the width of our little cliff, scanned every inch. I aimed the light upward until the night smothered it.

Nothing. Everything had become nothing.

10 percent power. 1:11 a.m.

As a girl I’d loved constellations, made a study of them, mapped whole skies across scrolls of butcher paper in the backyard on summer evenings, bluebottles drowsing around me, the grass soft beneath my elbows. Now they paraded overhead, the winter heroes, spangled against the night: Orion, bright and belted; Canis Major, loping after him; the Pleiades, strung out like jewels along Taurus’s shoulder. Gemini. Perseus. Cetus.

In my wounded voice I murmured their names like a spell to Livvy and Ed, their heads on my chest, rising and falling with my breath. My fingers stroked their hair, his lips, her cheek.

All those stars, smoking cold. We shivered beneath them. We slept.

4:34 a.m. I shuddered myself awake. Inspected both of them—Olivia first, then Ed. I applied some snow to his face. He didn’t flinch. I rubbed it against his skin, sloughing off the blood; he twitched. “Ed,” I said, jostling his shoulder. No response. I checked his pulse again. Faster, fainter.

My stomach complained. We never ate dinner, I remembered. They must be famished.

I ducked into the car, where the dashboard light had dimmed, almost died. There it was, squashed against the rear passenger window: the duffel bag I’d packed with PB&Js and juice boxes. As I gripped the strap in my fist, the light went out completely.

Back outside, I peeled the plastic wrap from a sandwich, shook it to one side; a strand of wind caught it, and I watched as it floated up and away, gossamer, like a fairy, a will-o’-the-wisp. I tore off a corner of bread, brought it to Olivia. “Hey,” I murmured, my fingers playing against her cheek, and her eyes drew open. “Here,” I offered, tucking the bread into her mouth. Her lips parted; the bread bobbed there, like a drowning swimmer, before sinking to her tongue. I picked the straw off the juice box, stabbed it in. Lemonade bubbled through it, dribbled onto the snow. I pushed an arm beneath Olivia’s head and lifted her face to the straw, squeezed the box. It overflowed her mouth. She spluttered.

I lifted her head farther, and she sipped, hummingbird gulps. After a moment, her skull lolled into my hand, and her eyes slipped shut. I laid her softly on the ground.

Ed next.

I knelt beside him, but he wouldn’t open his mouth, wouldn’t even open his eyes. I tapped the pinch of bread against his lips, stroked his cheek as though it might unhinge his jaw, yet still he didn’t move. Panic rose inside me. I put my head to his face. A current of breath, weak but insistent, warmed my skin. I exhaled.

If he couldn’t eat, he could still drink, surely. I rubbed his dry lips with a bit of snow, then slid the straw into his mouth. Clenched my fingers around the box. The juice ran down either side of his chin, clotted in his stubble. “Come on,” I pleaded, but liquid kept hurrying down his jaw.

I withdrew the straw and placed another dollop of frost on his lips, then on his tongue. Let it melt down his throat.

I sat on the snow again, sucked on the straw. The lemonade was too sweet. I drained the box anyway.

From the car I pulled a duffel bag stuffed with down parkas and ski pants. I yanked them out, laid them across Livvy and Ed.

Looked up at the sky. It was impossibly huge.

Light settled on my lids like a weight. I opened them.

And squinted. Above us stretched the sky, unbroken, unending, a deep sea of clouds. Snow sifted down in dandelion flakes, burst against my skin. I checked the phone. 7:28 a.m. 5 percent power.