Desperation   ::   Кинг Стивен

Looking at it brought Peter back in a rush-Peter, who had been so goddamned, absurdly proud of his James Dickey monograph, never guessing that the planned follow-up wasn’t going to happen…

The car doubled in her sight, then blurred into prisms.

Chest hitching, she wiped an arm across her eyes, then knelt and felt around under the front bumper. At first she couldn’t find what she was looking for and it all seemed like too much. Why did she want to follow the Ryder truck to Austin in this car, anyway.

Surrounded by memories. By Peter.

She laid her cheek against the bumper-soon it would be too hot to touch, but for now it was still night-cool—and let herself cry.

She felt a hand touch hers, tentatively, and looked around. David was standing there, his gaunt, too-old face hanging over a slim boy’s chest in a bloodstained baseball tee-shirt.

He looked at her solemnly, not quite holding her hand but touching her fingers with his, as if he would like to hold it.

“What’s wrong, Mary.”

“I can’t find the little box,” she said, and pulled in a large, watery sniff. “The little magnetic box with the spare key in it. It was under the front bumper, but I guess it must have fallen off. Or maybe the boys who took our license plate took that, too.” Her mouth twisted and she began to cry again.

He dropped to his knees beside her, wincing as some thing pulled in his back. She saw, even through her tears, the bruises on his throat where Audrey had tried to choke him—ugly black-purple blotches like thunderheads.

“Shhh, Mary,” he said, and felt along the inside of the bumper with his own hand. She could hear his fingers fluttering in that darkness, and suddenly wanted to cry out: Be careful! There might be spiders! Spiders!

Then he showed her a small gray box. “Give it a shot why don’t you. if it doesn’t start He shrugged to show it didn’t matter much, one way or the other-there was always the truck.

Yes, always the truck. Except Peter had never ridden in the truck, and maybe she did want the smell of him a little longer. The feel of him. That’s a nice set of cantaloupes, ma ‘am, he’d said, and then touched her breast.

The memory of his smell, his touch, his voice. The glasses he wore when he drove. Those things would hurt, but—“Yeah, I’ll come with you,” David said. They were kneeling in front of Deirdre Finney’s car, facing each other that way. “If it starts, that is. And if you want.”

“Yes,” she said. “I do want.”

Steve and Cynthia joined them, helped them to their feet.

“I feel like I’m a hundred and eight,” Mary said.