He Thought I'd Forget novel · Chapter 13 of 32

Chapter 13: Headlights

"Leona."

Clark's voice came from very far away.

My hands were wrapped around a steering wheel that wasn't there.

The lights behind me flashed again.

Somebody wanted me to stop.

I didn't want to stop.

"Leona. Hey. I've got you."

A hand closed over mine on my knee.

The bridge came back. The yellow lamps. The cedar smell of his truck.

The car behind us swung out and roared past, a kid in a backward cap with his music thumping.

"Pull over," I said.

Clark pulled into a gas station on the other side and put the truck in park.

He didn't let go of my hand.

"Somebody was behind me," I said. "That night. Flashing their lights at me."

"Did you see who?"

I closed my eyes and tried.

The little mirror. The parking pass swinging. The white glare.

Nothing behind it.

"No," I said. "I just know I wasn't going to stop for them."

"Then you were getting away from somebody," he said.

Neither of us said who.

He drove me back to Jeanine's at exactly the speed limit.

The attorney spread the papers on Jeanine's kitchen table at eight the next morning.

A petition for divorce.

LEONA ALDANE, PETITIONER, typed across the top.

"Your sister signs as guardian," the attorney said. "But I want your signature right under hers. I want a judge to see your hand."

Jeanine read every line out loud with her finger under each word.

Halfway down the second page, my nephew wandered in for cereal.

"Is this the divorce?"

"Go to school," Jeanine said.

"From the guy who said you were dead?"

"Yes."

"Good," he said, and took the whole box with him.

Jeanine signed.

Then she turned the pen around and held it out to me.

I hadn't signed my name on anything that mattered in six years.

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