He drove with the window cranked open, letting the steady feed of iced air onto his face keep him awake; letting it keep the ghosts away.
Leaning down, Gabriel hunted either end of the dial for something worth listening to, settling for the loud backslash of freeform Jazz piano over the dull threnody of Declan Shea’s scratchy voice.
He had nowhere to go, but some days nowhere wasn’t such a bad place to be, so he just drove, through the stretching Babel’s of concrete and glass scraping through the thickening flakes of snow; and on every snowflake a ghost of the past came riding down. Places they’d shared. Every building had its ghost, every street corner its memory.
The Studebaker was bleeding a fine tail of oil behind itself, like a snail in the early morning.
Satellite dishes and antenna broke out like acne on the face of the city.
In his head, or in the passenger seat, Francesca cradled their son in her arms, her long fingers tangling in the boy’s mop of dark hair, soothing Sam into a second pair of arms and the embrace of sleep. She was singing: Hush little baby, don’t say a word, daddy’s gonna buy you a mocking bird, and if that mocking bird won’t sing, daddy’s gonna buy you a diamond ring…
Tears in his eyes, Gabriel had to stop the car. Cars went past on the outside, their horns braying, inside his heart was breaking.