My Tow Driver Found Me at 2 A.M., and Home Could Wait novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Mile Marker 61
Her Camry dies on a gravel road at 2 a.m., she lies to her husband on the phone, the tow driver says the company's covering it, and she takes off her ring and climbs across the seat to kiss him.
My car died at 2:04 in the morning on a gravel road off the highway, and I let it roll until it stopped.
There was no moon.
The dash lights went out one at a time.
Then there was only the sound of the wheat stubble ticking in the wind.
My phone lit up on the passenger seat.
It was a missed call from Kent at 1:40, and under it a text.
Where are you? I woke up and the car's gone. I can have the agency send a truck.
I was thirty-seven years old, I had been married twelve years.
I had left my husband asleep in his recliner with the laptop open on his chest.
I had told no one I was going.
I called him back from the shoulder, because if I didn't he would call the sheriff.
He picked up on the first ring.
"Carla. Thank God. Where are you?"
"I'm at Mom's," I said. "I couldn't sleep, so I came early to start on the closets."
"You could have woken me."
"You were tired."
"I'm always tired, you could still have woken me." His voice was calm and kind and a little late, the way it was about everything. "Is the heat on out there? The power's been off since April."
"I've got a lantern."
"I'll drive over Saturday and help," Kent said.
"Don't. Stay home, Kent. I want to do it alone."
He was quiet, and I heard the recliner creak.
"Okay," he said. "Text me when you're up. Love you."
"Love you too."
I hung up and sat with the phone in my lap.
He had been worried about me in the way he was worried about everything, a little late and very kindly.
I had lied to him on purpose.
I had lied about the house, and about where I was, and I did not feel bad enough to stop.
I had $212 in my wallet.
Every other dollar I had was in the joint account, which Kent went through line by line on the first of every month.
A tow from his insurance agency would put a claim on his desk with my name on it.
So I did what I could afford.
I googled Janzen & Son Towing, Marion, and called the number from the shoulder of the road.
A man answered on the second ring.
"Janzen's."
"My car's dead. County road off Fifty, past the Peabody exit. I think it's the transmission."
"Mile marker?" he asked.
"There isn't one. There's a grain elevator behind me."
"Stay in the car, ma'am. Twenty minutes."
It was twenty-two.
Amber lights came over the rise and slowed, and a flatbed rollback stopped with its beacons turning orange across the stubble.
The man who climbed out had his sleeves pushed up past the elbow and a flashlight in his fist.
He was young, and he was big.
He had sandy hair cut close, a nose that had been broken once, and grease worked into the cuticles of both hands.
He put the light on my hood and then on me through the windshield.
Then he lowered it so it wasn't in my eyes.
I got out.
"Levi," he said. "Tell me what it did."
"It slipped out of gear, and then it just rolled."
He put the Camry in neutral and tried it and listened.
"Transmission," he said. "It's not going anywhere tonight."
"How much to tow it?"
"Company's got a rescue fund. No charge tonight."
I should have asked what that meant.
I was too tired, and it was the only thing anyone had said to me all week that cost me nothing.
"Thank you," I said.
He winched the Camry up onto the bed in about four minutes, with a clean economy I could have watched all night.
He carried my bag to the cab.
When I took the step up he put his hand flat between my shoulder blades to steady me.
It stayed there one second longer than the step needed.
I felt the heat of it through my hoodie, and I went up into the seat and he shut the door.
He dropped his keys getting around the front.
I heard them hit the gravel.
"Cold," he said when he climbed in, and he held up his hand and flexed it.
It was fifty-five degrees.
He pulled out onto the road with both hands on the wheel.
"Where to, ma'am? Marion?"
"My mother's house is on Cedar Street," I said. "But the power's off."
"I can take you to a motel in Hillsboro."
"Not a motel."
He glanced at me.
I looked at his hands.
"Drive," I said.
He drove.
He didn't ask where, and I didn't say.
A mile on, where a field road ran off beside a grain elevator, he slowed, turned in and cut the engine.
The cab ticked in the dark.
I looked down at my left hand.
I turned the ring on my finger once and then pulled it off over the knuckle.
I set it in the cup holder.
"I'm married," I said. "Don't call me ma'am."
He didn't look at the ring.
"If you want to say no," I said, "say it now."
"You say it," Levi said.
His voice was low and level, and it shook once at the end.
"No," I said.
Then I climbed across the bench seat and kissed him.
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