Next Time Away novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Ice Road

We were ten minutes down the shore road before I said anything.

The truck's heater clicked, and the lake went by black on my right.

"Tell me," I said. "All of it. I'm tired of getting it from people who scream it on porches."

Jonas kept his eyes on the road.

"It was two years ago, the last week of January," he said. "Your husband's brother and I were out at his fish house on the ice."

"Soren's brother."

"We'd been drinking." He said it flatly. "We packed up around midnight, and I drove his truck back across the ice road."

"You drove."

"The truck went through at the pressure ridge off Pike Bay." His hands tightened on the wheel. "I got out. He didn't."

I watched the side of his face in the dashboard light.

"Were you drunk?"

"That's what the report says."

It was a strange way to answer, and I noticed it and did not know what to do with it.

"Did they charge you?"

"I pleaded to reckless driving. Probation, and a fine." He shrugged one shoulder. "They took my license for good."

My head turned toward him.

"Jonas. You're driving right now."

"Yes."

"Without a license."

"I drive when somebody calls," he said. "You called."

"Pull over. I'll find another way home."

"Who?" he said.

I opened my mouth and had nobody to name.

He drove on.

"I'm telling you so you can decide," he said. "I don't drive for anybody else. I don't drive for fun. I never have since. But I'm not going to leave you standing in a cold parking lot because of a piece of plastic."

I looked out at the water.

I thought of the night it had happened.

I had been at my mother's house two hours away, and I had come home at two in the morning, and Soren had been sitting in our dark kitchen in his coat.

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