Chapter Twenty-Seven #3
It’s a large car, with a row of seats in the back that have been collapsed to make room for an ungodly amount of stuff.
Canned foods, gallons of water, space heaters, soap: a doomsday prepper’s jackpot.
These aren’t supplies for one week, or even two, and they aren’t a haul a person who expects to have regular access to a grocery store collects.
It’s a stark reminder: wherever our destination is, I may be there for a very long time.
A princess in her castle, guarded by a dragon whose very touch can send me to my demise.
The realization sobers me. I think about my patients, who will show up for their procedures on Monday to find that the physician who promised to relieve their chest pain or replace their valve has disappeared without notice.
About Onix, already abandoned once by a family who didn’t want him, and who won’t know that his second momma misses him desperately.
About Sophie and Winona, who don’t need anyone else to worry about right now, and my parents, cozy in distant North Carolina, who might hear the news first from police.
About Brandon, who may or may not still be alive.
Ritika is chattier than I expected during the drive, though her tone remains deadpan and her wit dry.
She apologizes for the unexpected embrace outside Harrison & Conrad (“If I’m honest, I feel like you needed it, and it was a great excuse to slip you the card”), rags on Julian (“He’s kind of a dork when he’s not doing the whole suave, charming act to lure unsuspecting victims, but I guess you like that”), and ribs me about my piano fetish (“I can’t believe he found a woman who cares about a Fingeldoffer or whatever they’re called”).
She doesn’t seem at all perturbed by our predicament.
The one time she brings up the Ulrich Corridor shooting, it’s to cluck her tongue and say, “Leila, doing the most as per usual,” express concern for Rose, and go on a tirade about how Julian has successfully managed to keep his affiliation with her family a secret from his more paranoid sister for generations.
I find Ritika, and her family, utterly befuddling.
But there’s a comfort in her presence too.
It’s evidence that there are regular, mortal people Julian cares about who care about him too, and for whom the improbability of his existence is banal.
I must be staring a hole into the back of her head, because she catches it in the rearview mirror and smiles.
“You have questions,” Ritika observes.
“Oh, you have no idea,” I confirm. I glance sidelong at Julian, who has largely been silent during this leg of the drive, his arms crossed and body turned toward his window.
I want to ask Ritika about the past generations of Ghoshals, what happens when their service is over, if she grew up with a preternaturally ageless adult occasionally visiting her home or if Julian materialized out of the tapestry on the day of her ritual.
I want to understand how she could put a price tag on six months of her life, if she resents her parents for demanding she make such an incomprehensible choice before she could fully understand its consequences.
I want to ask her what she and Julian intend for me, if their plan to whisk me off to safety includes preserving the life I’ve lovingly built.
But I don’t, because my head hurts, and my exhaustion is something not even sleep can fix. And so instead I drift, and eventually Ritika turns on an oldies station, and our journey continues to the soft murmurs of the Cranberries and Fleetwood Mac.
Hours later our car is careening off the smooth asphalt of the interstate and onto a wooded gravel road.
A few small houses peek out through the trees, all fairly recently built from the size and style, but they are all at least a quarter mile apart.
It’s daytime, so I can still see, but I notice no signage indicating a neighborhood, no street lights, no evidence that we have entered a community.
Finally, Ritika makes another sharp left, and we are bouncing up an uneven driveway and to a large cottage.
“Home sweet home,” Ritika mutters.
Under different circumstances, I might have found my new “home” quite charming.
It sits atop a picturesque hill, and we’re far enough south that when I step out of the car I realize we’ve exchanged Chicago’s bone-deep winter sting for a brisk but survivable Southern chill.
Leaves cover the entirety of the expansive grounds, and I spot a veranda with a swing, a basketball hoop, and, to my amusement, an assortment of sun-bleached garden gnomes.
Onix would have loved to run these grounds. When I first adopted him, before his arthritis got bad, he’d take off in zoomies around the dog park, galloping in circles before flopping joyfully at my feet.
“It’s just for a while,” Julian says from behind me. He hasn’t spoken in so long that hearing his voice jolts me out of my thoughts.
I snort. “Oh yeah? You swear?”
He doesn’t respond, because of course he can’t. I shake my head. Then, because I am powerless to do any different, I walk up to the door. “So. Who wants to give me a tour of my jailhouse?”