me. For the first time in two years I felt like I might actually accomplish something meaningful. I couldn’t give up too soon…couldn’t screw up, either. I had to make this happen. Had to prove I could do more with my life again than sit around waiting for a disability check to arrive or simply filing papers.
I shook off the old, familiar panic that attempted to creep up my spine. I would not let fear hold me back. I’d almost done that two years ago. I refused to go backward.
My family had rallied around me. Would have taken care of me the rest of my life with no questions asked. But merely existing was not enough for me. I needed more. I needed to do something that mattered. Something beneficial to society as a whole. I’d had that as an elementary teacher. I loved my teaching work…loved the children. Not a single day passed in my former career that I didn’t feel as if my small part genuinely mattered in the grander scheme of things. Sitting at home as a deaf, disabled woman almost drove me crazy at first, before I’d convinced my family I had to contribute to society somehow.
One year later, after intensive counseling and training, I felt ready to face the world again. The counseling had helped me get past feeling sorry for myself. Unfortunately, even I wasn’t above that pathetic pitfall. The training had taught me how to function without one of my senses.
I could sign, but it wasn’t my favorite way to communicate. I was well into my twenty-eighth year by then. Speaking had been my primary means of communication for far too long to change. I could still speak, I just couldn’t hear. One of the instructors at the academy for the hearing impaired had offered a solution I could live with. Lip reading. So I started to study the art. It’s more than merely watching the lips…the whole face is involved, and like science, it is by no means exact.
I grew very good at it. Very, very good. Within months I could read lips and respond in a conversation with scarcely a delay. Most strangers I encountered these days didn’t even realize I was deaf. So far, being deaf hasn’t affected the way I speak. I did have to study new ways to modulate my speech. I learned the difference in how it feels to speak in a normal tone versus a raised voice or shouting. I paid particular attention to the tension in my throat muscles and to the reaction of others. Once you started to pay attention and respond more to your visual world, it was amazing how much you could read on a person’s face. Like most things in life, everything was in the details.
Likewise, I could tell the tone in which a person was speaking by the expressions on his or her face and other subtle mannerisms. Once in a great while I meet the proverbial poker face. Then I have no choice but to interpret his tone by his words. I don’t like the loss of control that comes with those rare situations. That was just another reason I hated talking on the phone. For one thing, I had no way of knowing who was speaking. I could assume, based on the number I dialed, who might answer, but I couldn’t know for sure. Caller ID helped, at least I knew the name that went along with the number from which a call is made to me. Having no power over that aspect of my life was disturbing when I let myself dwell upon it—which wasn’t often.
Sawyer took a left too quickly for me to react. I had no choice but to drive to the next turn and hope I could catch up with him on the first cross street.
I didn’t draw in another breath until I saw his car move beneath a streetlight halfway up the next block. I followed.
“Thank God,” I muttered.
With less traffic on this side street there was only one car between us, which made me a little nervous. He slowed for a turn. That turn, a right, left nothing between us. I managed to click off my headlights in the nick of time. No way was I taking the risk of being spotted. He would be watching for a tail. He couldn’t be so stupid as to go forward with this plan and not be aware of his surroundings. He would be on the lookout for trouble.
Ten more minutes passed before Sawyer made another turn, again to the right. I recognized the area. Residential. Low rent. My heart pounded with anticipation, my palms were sweating. I kept swiping one or the other on my jeans to keep a firm grip on the steering wheel.
Thirty minutes later, with a full hour to go until the appointed time, he had driven around and around, seemingly in circles, before moving back onto the street he’d originally turned onto. What was this guy doing? My phone had vibrated twice more since the last call from Barlow but I ignored it. Couldn’t take my eyes off my target.
Sawyer took another right and picked up some speed. The addition of some light traffic allowed me to turn my headlights back on. We left the city limits behind, but there were still plenty of houses and the occasional convenience store. Still, the farther from Nashville proper we ventured the more worried I got. I should call Barlow. No, not yet. I didn’t even know where we were going…I couldn’t do that.
Sawyer hooked a left. I turned off my headlights once more, praying I wouldn’t run over anyone or anything. I wasn’t familiar with this area. No streetlights. Wooded. One or two houses, then nothing. Once in a while a field would interrupt the expanse of forest. Without traffic for camouflage I had no choice but to remain dark.
He turned right onto a road that disappeared into the trees. Talk about utterly lost. Maybe in the daylight I would have recognized the area. I waited a second or two before following the same route. His taillights disappeared around a bend in the road. Narrow, tree-lined. Gave new meaning to the term rural.
My pulse skittered, but I’d come too far to back out now. I made the turn…this one the “no way back” kind, because this road was one lane at best. If Sawyer turned around or backed up I would be in serious trouble. I watched him make another left, his taillights bobbing, onto yet another road—a constricted path, actually, I decided when I reached it. I blinked in surprise when I saw the interior light of his car come on. He had stopped and was getting out fifty or sixty yards from the last turn he’d made. I saw this only by virtue of that interior light. He was too far away for me to see anything clearly.
I didn’t dare move a muscle, though he was plenty far away enough not to hear the engine of my Jetta, which according to my brothers ran as smoothly and quietly as the salesman had insisted it did.
Sawyer shoved his car door closed. The interior light went out. With the trees blocking the moon, it was black as pitch this deep in the woods. I had long ago turned off my headlights so there was no chance of him seeing me if he turned around…as long as he didn’t hear me. I prayed my brothers were right about the noiseless operation of my little four-cylinder.
Okay. I had two choices. I could sit right here until he got back into his car and risk him seeing me when he started the engine, turned on his lights and began to back up, or I could roll forward, away from the road onto which he’d turned, and risk him hearing the sound of my tires bearing down on whatever lay beneath them. As best I could tell, it was a dirt road, but I had no way of anticipating if there was any gravel involved or how much racket would accompany my forward movement.
The one thing I knew for certain was that I couldn’t just sit here. He was nearly two hundred feet away….
Screw it. I had to do something. I relaxed my right foot from the brake pedal ever so slightly and allowed the Jetta to roll forward away from the intersecting road where he’d turned off. I had to conceal my position before he’d accomplished whatever he’d come here to do. Might as well be now. Since I couldn’t turn on my lights and no longer had his to follow, I had to assume the road before me continued on. I couldn’t be sure any more than I could be about the one he’d taken. For all I knew that road could take him back to the main drag we’d left some minutes ago. Too many variables. Something else I should have thought of.
I parked about twenty yards away and shut off the engine, then took a deep, bolstering breath and got out. I eased the door closed
