Muleshoe, Texas—253 Miles to Albuquerque
Rebecca hadn’t said a word since they’d left the fox by the side of the road, and the mood inside the Jeep was grim. Her silence felt pointed. Judgmental. Like she blamed Cait for what had happened, even though it had clearly been an accident. That said, if she hadn’t been so caught up in her own thoughts, maybe she’d have seen the fox in time.
She had to admit, she’d been surprised when Rebecca had gotten out of the car after the accident, and even more surprised when she’d insisted on helping carry the body to the side of the road. She didn’t seem like someone who would be comfortable getting her hands dirty. Seemed more like a sidelines kind of woman, used to other people doing things for her. Especially the nasty stuff.
But she’d helped, all right—had barely even flinched as she lifted the fox’s shoulders. Cait could still feel the weight of it in her arms, the soft fur tickling the insides of her elbows.
Guilt twisted her stomach. She should have been paying closer attention to the road.
She shook away the thought. Keep it light, that was her motto. If you let it get on top of you, you’ll drown.
“Well, that wasn’t exactly an auspicious start to the trip.” She was trying for flippant, but when she sneaked a glance at Rebecca, she worried she’d missed the mark. The woman’s face was as still and solemn as one of those ceremonial death masks.
A beat went by. “I’ll be marking down your Uber rating, that’s for sure.”
Cait was quick to catch it. “Hey, don’t forget I offered you bottled water earlier. That’s worth at least a couple of stars.” The joke surprised her: she hadn’t pegged Rebecca as the joking kind, either. It was good, though. It was an opening. She could work with it. “So, terrible driving service aside, how are you feeling? Do you need anything?”
Rebecca shook her head. “I’m okay for now, thanks.” The smile disappeared.
Cait nodded, easy. “Okay, well, just let me know. That’s what I’m here for.”
“I will.”
Silence. She rode it out. She could sense Rebecca wanting to say something, felt it welling up inside of her. She just had to be patient.
Finally, Rebecca took a breath. “Have you ever had something bad happen?”
Cait looked at her. “Driving, you mean?”
Rebecca nodded.
Cait reached over and fiddled with the radio dial. Nothing but static. She was stalling for time. “Nothing serious.”
“So something has happened?”
Cait shrugged. “One woman’s boyfriend chased her out of the house with a baseball bat. I don’t know if he was meaning to use it, or if it was just for show, but we didn’t stick around to see. She dove into the car and I drove off as fast as I could.”
“Jesus. Anything else?”
Cait shook her head. There was no point in scaring the poor woman. So she didn’t mention the brick somebody had thrown through her windshield, as technically, that hadn’t happened during a drive. A technicality, maybe, but an important one.
“Did the woman go back to him?”
“The boyfriend?” Cait shrugged. “I don’t know. I tried to tell her that we could provide her with other services, that our help wouldn’t just end once the procedure was finished, but she didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t want to talk at all, actually—as soon as she was in the car and away from that house, she closed her eyes and slept all the way to Albuquerque. I don’t know if she was faking it or if she really was that exhausted.” Cait thought about it for a minute. “Probably both.”
“So you dropped her off back at the house when it was finished?”
Cait heard the implied criticism and felt a flash of irritation. “We’re here to help as much as we can, but we’re also here to do what the client tells us. She told me to drop her back at the house, so that’s what I did.” I did my job, she added silently. Just like I’m doing now.
“Was the boyfriend waiting for her?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see him. I waited at the curb for a few minutes after she went inside, just in case, but . . .” She shrugged again. “Nothing.”
She could still remember the feeling of powerlessness as she’d watched the woman walk up the drive, the gentle slope of her shoulders signaling nothing but resignation. Cait had wanted to jump out of the Jeep and grab her and shake her. Instead, she just watched her disappear into the darkened house, and after sitting outside for ten minutes, she’d driven back to Austin and spent the evening sinking beers and trying to forget.
It was a feeling she was all too familiar with.
Nine Months Earlier
It was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek personal essay: nothing more. It was a little clickbaity, maybe, but that’s how Internet journalism worked. You wrote a piece about something, your editor stuck a controversial headline on it, and you got eyeballs. Eyeballs meant advertiser money, and advertiser money meant the website could pay their writers. Not much, obviously. Five hundred dollars was the most she’d ever gotten for a story, and that was a spon-con thing for a hotel chain. The stuff she’d cared about got much less—sometimes nothing.
She got a hundred dollars for this one.
She typed up the story as soon as the Lyft dropped her back at her apartment, the alcohol wearing off after a strong cup of coffee, leaving her buzzing and jittery. She wrote the whole thing in an hour and sent it to her editor—well, the woman she hoped would be her editor—at a website that specialized in confessional essays and gossip.
“Thought you’d like this,” she wrote, and after she hit send, she took a long, hot shower and went to bed.
She didn’t have high hopes for it—Jake was well known in Austin, but he was only starting to break out nationally, and country music was generally considered pretty niche. But the timing worked in her favor, and editors were clamoring for Me Too content, especially when it involved a famous (or even semi-famous) man and salacious sexual details.
In the morning, there was an email waiting in her inbox: “Loved this,” the editor wrote, “but I think we should publish anonymously. I spoke to our legal team and we can’t cover your liability. We’ll pay you two hundred for your trouble. Sound okay?” She said it would go live later that day.
Cait was a little bummed that she wouldn’t get the byline, but she was still getting paid to be published, so she took herself for fancy coffee to celebrate. She sat in the café texting Alyssa and swapping stories with her about their night. Alyssa had ended up ditching the tech bro at Cedar Street and then gotten in a limo with a bunch of Israelis who were about to ship back to their home country and start their stints in the national army. “Those guys can really party,” Alyssa typed, along with a long string of emojis. “What happened to you?” she added. “You disappeared! *poof of smoke emoji*”
Cait filled Alyssa in on the details of her evening and told her to look out for the article later that day. At two p.m., the piece went live under the headline “WORST. DATE. EVER.” The thumbnail was a photograph of Jake’s brooding face with a pair of devil horns Photoshopped on the top of his head.