Descending Star

THUMBDRIVE

On the drive home through the slow, ponderous mist, Ben thought nothing of his freshly sore forearm, or Jacob's freshly bellicose enmity, or even Zoey's freshly precipitous forbearance. On that point he did idly speculate on the vanishingly improbable facts that their clothing had never come off and that they had never found their way to her queen sized canopy bed. Zoey and Ben, together, had been a foregone conclusion all their lives, and last night they had squandered the perfect opportunity to abandon their lifelong resistance to the inevitable.

He had expected Zoey to be hurt by his admission that he had tried to take her to a place that held special, sentimental significance for him. She had delayed her flight to spend this time with him, and he was still chasing after Edythe, gone though she was, and for all he knew, gone forever. He could not fathom how Zoey persevered it, but now she was urging him to choose another such place, for today's excursion. She sounded sincere about it.

Ben knew that she wanted him to have his closure. She wanted the homework assignment over and done with. Jacob had signed his own exit papers in the parking lot just minutes ago, and Zoey wanted Ben's lingering attachment to Edythe over and done with, too.

Last night had come so easily to them, so naturally. And yes, come dawn, they had made light of their platonic evening by joking that it had felt like an all-nighter between brother and sister, but they also knew that they hadn't fooled each other for a second. Ben had wanted her desperately. All night. She had trembled in his arms, all night, eyes open, expectantly waiting. No, they were not brother and sister, not at all. They had not even kissed, and he knew why. If they had kissed, they would not have remained clothed on that chaise lounge, for long. They would have transported each other to her bed, and they would have undressed each other on the way, and their years-long drought would have come to a resounding end.

"She's gone," he told himself, as he drove for home. "Gone forever. As though she'd never existed." He breathed hard, struggled to resolve the road through the mist, labored to convince himself that he was ready for a new chapter, the Zoey chapter.

He topped the small hill, rolled into their neighborhood, and pulled into his spot, puzzled that the paved spot for the police cruiser was occupied at mid-morning on a weekday. He had told Charlie that he would be out all night. Now he speculated that his father could be home sick.

He got out of the truck, puzzled, glanced backward, and stopped dead.

A car occupied the space, but not Charlie's cruiser.

He stared at an alabaster mid-engine cabriolet, its cabin pushed forward, almost to the front wheel wells, to make room for the enormous sixteen cylinder engine mounted behind the seats. Mist condensed into a sheen of droplets on the mirrored cream enamel, and the entire machine crouched so low upon its enormous wheels that the forward grille and lamp housings seemed to grip the driveway like talons. He could hear the air cooled aluminum engine block ticking in the silence, and he knew that the driver had only just arrived.

He stood rooted on point, breathless, for all of a second, before his mind hysterically exclaimed, Edythe's car!

Ben nearly knocked the front door off its hinges and never stopped to wonder why it wasn't locked. He barely caught sight of the unoccupied kitchen and living room as he raced up the stairs. At his bedroom door, he did break his way in, with his arm and shoulder as a battering ram, with a shower of pine splinters. The strike plate and a pair of bent wood screws clattered upon the floor as he stared wildly into his bedroom. His knees buckled at the doorway; his eyes filled with tears, and he knew, as he looked upon the empty rocking chair and bed, that Edythe's final departure that night in the Sol Duc River had left a void in his heart, an empty hole in his chest, that neither Zoey nor anyone else would ever fill.