Such Sheltered Lives

The Driver

Her mother’s warnings about dangerous strangers had become only more dire after the recovery center opened.

Who knows what kinds of people that place will attract, she said.

In her mother’s stories, the hitchhikers had always been men.

They certainly hadn’t been women with short bleached hair wearing dresses that looked like nightgowns under voluminous fur coats, guitars slung over their shoulders.

This woman—the one holding out her thumb on the road ahead—looks more like a ghost than a serial killer.