32

The agent’s voice, not quite sure, snapped Clay from his paralysis. He ducked under the reception tent flap and dashed between tables, to the silent artist in black jeans amid the swirl of cocktail dresses and boldly colored ties. He grabbed Natalia’s arm and jerked her to her feet.

“They’re here. We have to go.”

A few heads turned, but wine and music averted the rest. That and the desire not to see anything tonight that would ruin their celebration. Natalia ran to the table where Clay had been sitting and grabbed the camera bag. Clay dragged her through the tent, toward the open end. By the time they emerged under moon and stars, brightened by the distance from suburbia, she had gained her stride and ran beside him, fingers linked through his. A flashlight beam swung wildly behind them, lit the grass ahead. They dodged left, then right, together, no words needed to convey the path.

They reached the Jeep a hundred feet ahead of the agents. Clay leaped inside, waited for the slamming of the passenger door, and turned the key.

“Nat, you can go back. If you want to.”

She gulped a quiet breath, as if he’d hit her. He was only trying to do the right thing.

“Drive,” she whispered.

He jammed the Jeep into gear and floored it down the long dirt driveway, onto the dirt road. Headlights didn’t appear in his rearview until he was about to turn, heading for the highway. He’d left them behind.

“Clay, we … just …”

“Became fugitives?”

Natalia curled forward, head in her arms. “I was going to be here for her. When she came home.”

Why had she followed him, then? She could have stayed behind, waited for Khloe’s release, stitched a new life around the hole of her runaway husband until the fabric mended itself. He tried not to press a hand to his stomach, but the ache had started to burn. He drove one-handed.

An anonymous hotel room was easier to book than Clay had expected, thanks to Natalia’s quick thinking. The camera case contained an envelope of cash—the last half of Natalia’s payment, offered with an apology from a member of the bride’s family (“and there’s a little bonus for the delay”). Clay gave a folded bunch of twenties to the hotel desk clerk and stopped before Natalia’s maiden name came out of his mouth. The Constabulary would know that. Before his pause sounded like one, he blurted his mom’s maiden name instead.

The luggage still in the Jeep held only one clothes change for each of them, but better than nothing. Once they got to the room, Natalia walked a slow perimeter, then collapsed onto the queen-sized bed and fingered the dark blue comforter. She gazed out the window into the darkness, where the traffic flowed below them. Clay crossed the room and blocked her view.

She stared at him, but their eyes didn’t meet. For hours, she’d been slow-cooking words to a simmer, a boil. The tension of her shoulders, the tightness of her lips, promised a verbal volcano. He turned to lower the window blinds, then faced her again.

Natalia scooted farther back on the bed. “I’m not a criminal.”

“I know that.”

She stood, shuffled to the corner, lifted her suitcase and set it on the worn faux-wood desk. The folded stack of clothes didn’t rise more than a few inches, but she lifted a top, refolded it, and tucked it into the dresser.

The room was too small for much physical distance. She stood just feet away, mango shampoo overpowering the faint vanilla room spray. With each fold of the fabric, a cord rippled in the back of her hand.

“Natalia, I—”

“I’m contemplating the rest of our lives. A year from now, we’ll be a re-educated family. And either we’ll have you home, or you’ll be sitting stubbornly in custody, one of those re-education failure stories no one tells. Unable to be rehabilitated.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

She refolded her Capri pants once, again, then pressed at a nonexistent wrinkle. “I don’t know why I’m hiding out in a cheap hotel room when I should be turning myself in. Starting on re-education now. I could be finished the same time as Khloe. I could …”

Clay dropped onto the bed and bent forward, elbows on knees. Natalia couldn’t possibly believe what she was saying. But if a person didn’t believe in Christianity, didn’t consider it the only absolute on which life itself was built … Well, they wouldn’t evade capture forever. Turning themselves in might count toward clemency.

“You’re not going to argue with me?” Natalia swiveled toward him and clutched the khaki fabric.

“You seriously want to go to the Constabulary and volunteer for re-education?”

“I don’t think what I want has any bearing on what’s going to happen.”

“They’ll turn your head inside out. They’ll try to make you a good little citizen of the globe without any original thoughts or—”

Natalia tossed the pants back into her suitcase and turned her back.

Clay rubbed his stomach. “I’m not wrong.”

Natalia unbuttoned her jeans. Whoa, wait a minute, that’s not where they’d been heading two seconds ago. She perched on the edge of the bed to pull them off, still not facing him. Heat coursed through his body, but she pulled down the covers on the far side of the bed and crawled beneath them. Even with the air conditioning on, she’d overheat in ten minutes.

“Would you turn out the light, please?”

“Nat—”

“Whatever you’re going to say, let’s not say it.”

But I need to tell you. You’re right, I can’t last forever. Before this is over, I’ll be handcuffed, arrested, re-educated.

Minutes later, Clay lay on his back, weighted by the down comforter and every choice he’d made since he’d asked Natalia to come with him to a Table meeting. Since he’d brought Khloe home from the hospital for the first time, a seven-pound bundle of open eyes and open soul, and then for the last time, a gaunt six-year-old miracle. Since he’d asked a perky art major with strawberry hair to see the drama department’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire.

A few feet away, lying on the same mattress, the girl who’d grinned up at him and flipped her loose curls—“Thought I was going to have to ask you”—drew her knees up and shuddered out a sigh.