Chapter One: Breakdown

he 1955 Ford convertible died at the shoulder of Route 66 three miles short of anything on the map. The wedding cans rolled two yards back, dented and scored by the gravel. The engine ticked under the propped hood, the sounds fading faster in the rising heat.

Bobby White stood at the fender, tie loosened, arms bare to the wrist. The tuxedo jacket sweated through from armpit to elbow, the color deepening along his sides

A slow river of sweat carved down his neck, catching at the shadow of his jaw before soaking into his starched collar. His dress shoes gritted with pale dust, toes scuffed raw where he kicked the front tire.

Squinting into the engine bay, he frowned. Uncertain what to do, his hands hovered over the mass of belts and pipes. He poked once at a wire near the battery. The wire bent and stayed bent.

Alice White watched him from the passenger seat. She wore her wedding gown like armor. Layers of lace and tulle billowed around her knees, movements stirring a faint cloud of hot perfume and talcum.

Her white-gloved hand fanned her face in slow, deliberate sweeps, the motion unbroken and automatic. Sweat gathered at the nape of her neck, darkening the rim of her veil, and dampened the tendrils of hair that broke loose from the updo. Bobby’s shadow passed across her lap each time he circled the car. She ignored him. Her blue eyes fixed on the middle distance, on the nothing that waited at the far end of the empty highway.

Bobby braced both hands on the edge of the car and rocked his weight forward, staring deeper into the maze of the engine. Peering over his shoulder at Alice and smiled. His teeth flashed white, but the rest of his face didn’t get the memo.

“It’s nothing, babe,” he called. “Probably a loose connection. These old girls run hot.”

She kept fanning.

He tapped the battery with the heel of his hand. The sound rang sharp and brittle. He wiped his brow and left a smear of black grease above his eyebrow. He closed the hood too hard, the metal shuddering all the way to the trunk. The wedding cans jangled in protest.

Bobby walked to the driver’s side, pushed the door open, and slid behind the wheel. He pumped the gas, cranked the key, and held his breath.

The starter whined.

The engine caught for a half second, stuttered, and died again. He tried a second time, longer, foot to the floor. The same result. The silence that followed was louder than the wilderness.

Bobby slapped the steering wheel. Alice twitched, her fan pausing mid-arc before resuming at the same steady tempo.

He shut the door and got out, using both hands to smooth his jacket. The sun pinned him in place, burning a white streak into the part of his hair. He shielded his eyes and scanned the highway. East, nothing. West, nothing except the haze and the faint promise of motion a mile off, perhaps heat shimmer, possibly hope. He didn’t mention it.

“Nearest town’s a couple miles up,” he said. “I’ll see if there’s a garage.”

He started to add something, stopped, and stared at her. The silence between them stretched, thin as fishing line and twice as dangerous.

“You sure you’ll be alright here? I could—”

“Go,” she said. Her voice came out softer than she meant it. She tried again. “It’s fine, Bobby.”

He opened his mouth, closed it, and nodded. He put his hands in his pockets and kicked at the gravel. He took a few steps away, stopped, and returned to the car. He leaned in the open window, his face level with hers.

“You’ll lock the doors,” he said.

She blinked at him. “In the middle of the wasteland of Oklahoma?”

“You never know,” he said, and turned away.

She watched him walk, long strides eating up the cracked shoulder of the road. His shoes left white ghost prints on the asphalt. The sunlight beat him flatter with every step, until the line of his body broke apart and melted into the shimmer. The only sound left was the engine’s dying heat, and the faint, constant rasp of lace as Alice fanned her face.

She shifted in her seat. The wedding dress creaked under its own weight, a deadweight of tradition that pressed down on her shoulders. She gazed at herself in the side mirror, the blush on her cheek and the smudge of mascara threatening the outer corner of her eye. She adjusted the veil, but the pins pulled loose, and a lock of hair escaped and hung in front of her left eye. She left it there.

She considered getting out, standing by the road to flag down a car, but the thought of strangers was worse than the heat. She imagined Bobby’s shoes dissolving into nothing on the blacktop, imagined him walking until the end of the world. The image pleased her more than it should have.

A trickle of sweat crawled down her spine. She fanned harder. Her eyes tracked the horizon, and the place where Bobby vanished. She didn’t expect him back soon.

In the stillness, the engine clicked its slow death rattle, and a pale shimmer crawled up from the ground, flattening the world into two colors: white above, white below, and nothing in between.

She waited.

The wilds of Oklahoma offered little warning. First Alice registered her husband’s return as a vibration, a distant tremor through the air that set the wedding cans shivering against the gravel. When she craned her head to the rearview, she saw three figures: Bobby out in front, sleeves rolled high, flanked by two men who trailed a good ten yards behind, walking at their own deliberate pace.

Bobby led as if he owned the world from the neck down. He pushed his stride long, arms swinging, a man on a rescue mission. Behind him, Lloyd and Theodore moved with the casual inevitability of storm clouds, unhurried, one man’s hands in his pockets, the other’s resting at his sides.

Alice caught them in the mirror as they closed. Lloyd, taller, straight-backed, wore a striped service shirt and oil-dark slacks. A rag hung from his back pocket, and his left eyebrow had a thin white scar torn through it. He could have been any age from twenty-five to forty; his skin was tight, his jaw shadowed with fresh stubble. He walked with his chin up, surveying the horizon over Bobby’s head, not even pretending to hurry.

Theodore was harder to read.

He moved with the solid, slow certainty of a man who never needed to prove himself. With his forearms crisscrossed old marks and new grease, thick and brown, and his hands hung open, fingers bent slightly as if ready to pick up something heavy. Eyes darker than his skin, deep-set, they never left the car, not once, as he approached.

The trio stopped at the nose of the convertible. Bobby gestured at the engine, rattling off a few rehearsed phrases about battery terminals and vapor lock. His voice carried the easy authority of a man who believed his own explanations, and who never met a mechanic who did not defer to him within three minutes.

Lloyd and Theodore ignored the engine. They eyeballed Alice, first as a unit, afterward as an individual. Lloyd held her gaze a beat too long, letting his smile settle slow and easy on his face. Theodore’s eyes stayed on hers, expression blank, waiting.

Bobby coughed and gestured again.

“If you boys could help me give her a push, roll her down to your service bay—”

Lloyd cut him off, voice smooth and unhurried, lower than Alice expected. “This is a service station, not a gym, boy.”

The words hung in the air, bright and sharp. Bobby blinked. His mouth opened to protest, but nothing came out.

Lloyd glanced over at Theodore, who let his arms fall to his sides and turned back to Bobby. The glower was not subtle. It was the kind of stare men used at pool halls and VFW bars. The ones that measured a man by his willingness to shut up and move out of th