Wish You Well(4)

later. Not in front of the kids." She was suddenly very fearful of where this might actually

go.

"What do you mean I can't really believe that?" Jack said.

"Jack, not now."

"You started this conversation, don't blame me for wanting to finish it."

"Jack, please—"

"Now, Amanda!"

She had never heard quite this tone, and instead of making her more afraid, it made her

even angrier. "You hardly spend any time with the kids as it is. Always traveling, giving

lectures, attending events. Everybody already wants a piece of Jack Cardinal, even if they

won't pay you for the privilege. Do you really think it'll be better in California? Lou and

Oz will never see you."

Jack's eyes, cheekbones, and lips formed a wall of defiance. When it came, his voice was

filled with a potent combination of his own distress and the intent to inflict the same upon

her. "Are you telling me I ignore my children?"

Amanda understood this tactic, but somehow still succumbed to it. She spoke quietly.

"Maybe not intentionally, but you get so wrapped up in your writing—"

Lou almost vaulted over the front seat. "He does not ignore us. You don't know what

you're talking about. You're wrong! You're wrong!"

Jack's dense wall turned upon Lou. "You do not talk to your mother that way. Ever!"

Amanda glanced at Lou, but even as she tried to think of something conciliatory to say,

her daughter proved swifter.

"Dad, this really is the best story I've ever written. I swear. Let me tell you how it starts."

However, Jack Cardinal, for probably the only time in his life, was not interested in a

story. He turned and stared directly at his daughter. Under his withering look, her face

went from hope to savage disappointment faster than Amanda could take a breath.

"Lou, I said not now!"

Jack slowly turned back. He and Amanda saw the same thing at the same time, and it

pulled the blood from both their faces. The man was leaning into the trunk of his stalled

car. They were so close to him that in the headlights Amanda saw the square bulge of the

man's wallet in his back pocket. He wouldn't even have time to turn, to see his death

coming at him at fifty miles an hour.

"Oh my God," Jack cried out. He cut the wheel hard to the left. The Zephyr responded

with unexpected agility and actually missed the car, leaving the careless man to live

another day. But now the Zephyr was off the road and onto sloped ground, and there were

trees up ahead. Jack heaved the wheel to the right.

Amanda screamed, and reached out to her children as the car rocked uncontrollably. She

could sense that even the bottom-heavy Zephyr would not maintain its balance.

Jack's eyes were silver dollars of panic, his breath no longer coming up. As the car raced

across the slick road and onto the dirt shoulder on the other side, Amanda lunged into the

backseat. Her arms closed around her children, bringing them together, her body between

them and all that was hard and dangerous about the car. Jack swung the wheel back the

other way, but the Zephyr's balance was gone, its brakes useless. The car missed a stand

of what would have been unforgiving trees, but then did what Amanda had feared it

would all along, it rolled.

As the top of the car slammed into the dirt, the driver's door was thrown open, and like a

swimmer lost in a sudden rip, Jack Cardinal was gone from them. The Zephyr rolled

again, and clipped a tree, which slowed its momentum. Shattered glass cascaded over

Amanda and the children. The sound of tearing metal mixed with their screams was

terrible; the smell of freed gasoline and billowy smoke searing. And through every roll,

impact, and pitch again, Amanda pinned Lou and Oz safely against the seat with a

strength that could not be completely her own. She absorbed every blow, keeping it from

them.

The steel of the Zephyr fought a fearsome battle with the hard-packed dirt, but the earth

finally triumphed and the car's top and right side buckled. One sharp-edged part caught

Amanda on the back of her head, and then the blood came fast. As Amanda sank, the car,

with one last spin, came to rest upside down, pointing back the way they had come.

Oz reached for his mother, incomprehension the only thing between the little boy and

possibly fatal panic.

With a whipsaw motion of youthful agility, Lou pulled free of the destroyed guts of the

car. The Zephyr's headlights were somehow still working, and she looked frantically for

her father in the confusion of light and dark. She heard footsteps approaching and started

saying a grateful prayer that her father had survived. Then her lips stopped moving. In the

spread of the car's beams she saw the body sprawled in the dirt, the neck at an angle that