The day they pull her out of the river is sunny and clear. Police boats have been searching since last night, looking for the dark blue car in the dark blue water, and they’ve finally found something. Something hidden down there in the currents and the long-sunk trees and the shadows cast by the big blue bridge.
It’s nearly three o’clock when they drive the crane over the bank. The dive teams are working. White boats bob nearby. Traffic on the bridge slows.
Everyone watches. Everyone stares down into that deep, quick water.
Word spreads. Cars gather on the shoulders. Once school lets out, there are more. Clusters of people hurry out on foot, with cameras, with phones. News crews screech up in their painted vans.
Sun sparkles on the water.
I’m watching from the bank on the far side of the bridge. It took me just a few minutes to get from Anders’s place to the river, riding straight through the woods. It’s grassy here on the bank, and shaded, with clusters of birch and box elder and oak. Lots of people have collected here. Kids from school. TV reporters. We have a clear view.
Uniformed people on the boats point and gesture. Divers go under. The hook on the crane goes down. Down. Down.
Of course they’d find the car eventually. It was only a matter of time.
Rivers keep moving. Things lost in them move, too.
The divers surface. A huge motor revs.
The car rises slowly, like a sliver pulled out of thick skin. Waves boil around it. It’s upside down, so the tires come first, then the black undercarriage, and then, slowly, its body, dark and dripping.
The car isn’t deep blue. It’s black.
I can hear the gasps around me.
They know it isn’t Frankie’s car. That’s not Frankie inside of it.
It takes ages for the river water to drain away. The black Audi with the Illinois plates dangles there, swaying very slightly on the crane’s thick cable.
The windows slosh. They’re tinted anyway. Nothing to see inside. Not yet.
The headlights are dead now.
They were burning on Friday night. Just the low beams, not the brights. The rain was too thick. On the bridge, where mist gathers over the water, the air was like gray gauze.
She’d taken her time leaving the Underground Music Studios. Maybe she’d stopped to reapply her red lipstick or to comb her sleek dark hair. And I’m fast. Faster than any car. I had plenty of time, even after the talk at Anders’s window, to make it to the bridge. To be standing there. Ready.
She didn’t see me until it was too late.
The roads were slick. The pavement on the road that leads out of town is old, worn into soft divots that trap the rain. Her tires were already skidding.
As the Audi streaked closer, she met my eyes through the windshield. She saw me standing there. At the entry to the bridge. Waiting for her.
I could see her face. I could see her eyes. I could see the instant when she recognized me.
Then she hit the accelerator.
I watched her through the wet glass—sleek hair, spread red mouth, glittering teeth. Then I took a step forward, as fast as I can move.
Fast.
My hands hit the black hood so hard they left twin dents. I shoved the car to the side. It skidded off the road, away from the bridge, down a slope of scrub grass and gravel. I watched it veer straight over the bank and into the river.
There was barely a splash. Just a rushing sound, lost in the roar of the rain. The gold puddle of the headlights fading to black.
The car disappeared fast.
I waited for a while, past the foot of the bridge. Making sure nothing came back up.
Now it has.
But it’s been long enough. My heart is calm.
Everyone else is pushing closer to the water. Craning. Lifting up their phones. They want a glimpse of what’s stuck inside those draining windows.
I don’t need to know.
All I wonder is whether she stayed belted to her seat. If she was knocked out on impact. If she tried, too late, to shove the door open against the steel-hard pressure of the water.
I hope the end was quick.
I walk away.
It will be all over the news in less than an hour. The police need help identifying a woman: late twenties or early thirties, dark hair, alone in an expensive black car.
I know who she was. I know what she was. But no one else needs to know.
I get my bike from the bridge railing, climb on, and pedal slowly toward home. Toward the shed. Toward the root cellar.
But no one needs to know that, either.