Connie lay awake. It was another week, another roadside motel, another day of endless highway. She'd finished the book and dumped it in a trashcan somewhere. She wasn't thinking about the book, though. She was thinking about Ellie, the guy Arnold had traveled with when she first went with him. Ellie was dead now. She and Arnold had killed him. It had been an accident, she guessed. They'd been driving, late at night, and they'd hit something, bump in the road or something. Ellie'd gotten out to check the front wheel--it had a habit of coming off--and Arnold had been stretching. He'd stretched his arms back and his legs forward and his foot had been on the accelerator--by accident, he said, in his forced voice.
They'd thrown Ellie into the woods by the road and gone on their way. After that he'd ditched the jalopy and gotten a new car, and they'd been traveling ever since---ditching cars when they ran them into the ground and getting a new one. She didn't even know what car they were on.
Connie blinked once, twice. Why was she thinking about Ellie anyway? He was gone, he didn't matter. Because he's dead, the voice that was and wasn't hers answered in her head. He's dead. And she wanted Arnold dead.
Her thoughts swung 'round to the book. She hadn't really followed the plot or how the characters had fit together, but there had been one character who had hated her husband...so she killed him and herself together. Connie wanted that. She couldn't commit suicide. Arnold didn't let her get a hold of knives. She couldn't do it even if she had the tools. She wanted him dead. And she wanted herself dead. And for that to happen, she had to kill either one. There was a way.
Connie sighed soundlessly--Arnold was still awake--and turned over onto her side. She slept for the hour before dawn.
