One Last Thing Before I Go

suspension massages his lower half. Rich seems to dole out cars like Oprah, either as bribes or maybe consolation prizes, depending on how you look at it.
    Silver sits in the passenger seat, lulled into a light trance by the thrumming engine and the passing scenery. He has always loved car rides, always felt most at peace on the road, the blacktop churning beneath him, the horizon stretched out to infinity in front of him. He is aware of the obvious metaphor: You can’t run away from your problems, but you can definitely put some distance between them and you. He closes his right eye. His left seems to be functioning again.
    “I can see,” he says.
    Denise doesn’t say anything. She hasn’t spoken since they hit the parkway. She sits erect in her seat, both hands resting in the bottom crescent of the steering wheel—a habit he remembers from their earliest days. Her expression is grimly set, her lips moving almost imperceptibly as she rehearses what she’s going to say to Rich. Silver feels bad for her.
    “I feel bad for you,” he says.
    “I feel bad for me too.”
    It’s not exactly anger in her voice, but a not-too-distant cousin—somewhere between a cold shoulder and outright hostility. Silver remembers the disgust and contempt in Casey’s eyes just before she ran out last night. He doesn’t know if he can bear to see it again.
    “So,” he says. “What’s the plan?”
    “The plan,” Denise says, “is to ask for and receive exactly the kind of forgiveness that I would never give. I’m counting on the fact that Rich is a better person than me—or you, by the way. And maybe, just maybe, he will still consider marrying me, or at least not dumping me. And while I’m doing that, you will talk to our daughter and do whatever it is that you do that seems to make everyone who by all rights should hate you somehow find you appealing, so we can get her squared away.”
    “And how do I do that?”
    Denise shrugs. “When in doubt, grovel.”
    * * *
    Silver comes out of the service-station food market carrying two ice-cream cones. He hands one to Denise, who has just finished pumping the gas. She gives him a strange look, but the thing is, Silver knows, when someone hands you an ice-cream cone, just like when someone offers their hand to shake, you generally take it. And Denise does, offering the thinnest smile as she takes a lick.
    “I forgot about you and rest stops,” she says.
    Rest stops have always made him strangely happy. He couldn’t say why. Just the idea of everyone on their way somewhere, united by wanderlust, no one belonging more than anyone else.
    “And ice-cream cones,” she says. “What is it with you and ice-cream cones?”
    He licks around the edge of his cone as he considers the question. “I guess no one ever eats an ice-cream cone at a funeral, or a fire. The Red Cross doesn’t drop ice-cream cones into third-world countries. If you’re eating an ice-cream cone, it’s just very hard to believe that things have gone completely to shit. That there isn’t still hope.”
    Denise licks her cone thoughtfully. “So there’s still hope.”
    “I think so, yes.”
    She nods, and they just stand there for a moment, quietly licking their cones at the side of the highway while the light Saturday traffic speeds past them like missiles.
    She looks at him for a long moment, then sighs deeply. “Silver,” she says, her voice tinged with a profound sadness with which he is all too familiar. All the things you can’t get back, all the things you can never make right. No matter what happens after, you’ll always carry them with you.
    He looks away from her. “I know,” he says. “Believe me, I know.”
    * * *
    They exit the highway, driving past strip malls, car dealerships, and department stores until the road narrows and starts to wind through the trees. The sun flickers kinetically through the leaves, like a dying light, hurting his eyes. He didn’t think to bring sunglasses. He closes his eyes, feeling flushed and tired from his sunburn, and the car and Denise slip away a bit. He can feel his breath moving up and down his windpipe, can feel the silent, dogged contractions of his heart. It’s hard to imagine your heart simply stopping, but at the same time, it’s hard to believe that it didn’t give up years ago.
    “I can’t live like this anymore,” he says.
    He can hear Denise absorbing the remark. “Like what?” she says.
    “Like there’s some new life that’s