The Shuddering

staring through the windshield and an endless expanse of snow, his guilt so heavy it was suffocating him, burning him up from the inside out. He unzipped his coat and pressed his face into his hands, momentarily overwhelmed by the silence that surrounded them.
    “Here,” April said, her voice quavering with emotion.
    Sawyer let his hands drop to his lap and blinked at a ring attached to a silver chain in the palm of her hand. It was an old ring he had had since high school, one that was far too big for her to wear, but he had given her as a placeholder for her real engagement ring once he had the cash to buy it. He didn’t move, afraid to take it, scared to know what that would mean. Would he ever see her again? Would he be shut out of his child’s life?
    “You can give me the real one when you buy it.” She wiped a cheek with the sleeve of her coat. “If you decide you still want to buy it.” She dropped the ring into his hand and looked away again. “I’m sorry that I’m such a bitch. I just want to go home, okay? Please just take me home.”
    His heart twisted as he closed his hand around the ring, sliding it into the pocket of his coat before looking back to the unnavigable road ahead. “I don’t know if I can, Ape,” he confessed quietly.
    “Just…please try,” she pleaded. “I can’t go back in there. I’m not going to. There’s no way.”
    Sawyer could relate to that. He didn’t want to go back in there either, not without erasing the last fifteen minutes fromeveryone’s memory. He reversed again. There wasn’t enough distance between them and the car-made mogul to plow through it, so he turned the wheel to the right instead. They’d go around.
    He heard something behind them—a yell. Ryan was waving his arms over his head. Jane was standing next to him, her oversize sweater hanging off her like a sack, her colorful pajama pants a circuslike contrast against the whiteness of snow. Sawyer hit the brakes, suddenly realizing what Ryan was screaming about, but it was too late. The Jeep slid down the slope of the driveway, then suddenly lurched forward, the right front tire sinking lower than the rest.
    “Shit,” Sawyer said, freezing in place. But with no possibility of reversing, he kept the Jeep rolling; it was forward or nothing. April sucked in a shaky breath as the front tire pulled out of the divot while the back tire replaced it. He cursed his decision of veering right rather than left. Left would have given him a better view of what he was doing. Right just had him guessing what was coming.
    “Roll down your window,” he said.
    April did as she was told, a startled expression veiling her features, a cold blast of air coiling through the car’s interior.
    “I need to know if I’m clear.”
    “I don’t know,” she said, her bottom lip trembling again.
    “Ape, come on. I need your help.”
    “Clear of what ?” she asked.
    Frustrated, he leaned forward, his chest pressed against the steering wheel. The trees were close to the passenger side now, threatening to knock off the side-view mirror. Ryan was skidding down the road behind them, sticking to the tracks they’d made. Sawyer reluctantly rolled down his window as his friend slid to a stop beside the car.
    “You can’t go any farther,” Ryan told them, breathing hard. “You’re at the edge of the runoff.”
    Sawyer slammed the Jeep into reverse, but the tires just spun, kicking up dirty snow onto the road.
    “I’m not going back in there,” April whispered, her gaze pleading for Sawyer to keep trying.
    “You’re stuck,” Ryan said. “There’s no way out of here.”
    That was when April started sobbing.
    Sawyer blinked at the girl next to him, surprised by her response. There was no question that she would resist hiking back up the driveway, but he couldn’t help but stare as she shook her head in insistence, her fists pounding against her knees, a full-fledged temper tantrum—something he had yet to witness in the six months they had been together.
    “No no no no NO !” she yelled. “I’m not going back in there! I want to go home!”
    Ryan leaned through the window, trying to reason with her. “Even if you get down this road, you’re never going to make it to the highway.”
    “Why don’t you mind your own business?” she wailed. “I don’t even know you.”
    “Jesus,” Sawyer said.
    “If you don’t drive, I will,” April cried into her hands. “Just stay here with your friends, okay? I