Jack Robles drove a 2008 white Ford Focus. 

The left mirror wasn’t crooked until today.

His To-Do list: drive to Taylor, interview, get the job, head back to Gary and maybe stop at that train-station restaurant, among the kind that used to be cute but are now almost trivial.

Up to this point, his pursuit of those items had been futile. His ‘Has-Done’ list : get a flat tire, get angry and punch the mirror, get rejected by the little man in the much bigger chair, get angry and punch the mirror again. 

“Jack...we just don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be working for us.”

“What are you talking about, Mr. Lee?”

Mr. Lee, from the depths of his colossal seat cushion, gave Jack a look like a nurse telling doleful kids that their mom isn’t going to make it. We tried our best, or something like that. Mr. Lee’s vexation was so obvious that it may have been plastered on every billboard between Taylor and Merrifield. The sympathy appeared in the corners of his grim smile, a look Jack had come to be familiar with--one that made him clench a fist and bite a cheek.

“...we just think you need a little more time to grieve.”

Jack Robles felt his throat closing up. “I don’t.”

Mr. Lee scratched his head awkwardly. “We think that you ought to take a little break from your work for now. We don’t want somebody...you know, having a  breakdown or something while in the middle of a project.”

“I don’t have breakdowns.”

“That’s...not what Mr. Gerard said.”

Jack swallowed hard. There was smoke in his eyes.

He stared.

Mr. Lee stared back. “I’m sorry for your loss, Jack.”

In terms of phrases that were both overused and completely stupid- at least, in Jack’s mind - ‘I’m sorry for your loss’ took the cake.

He got up, tipping his chair a little. Mr. Lee flinched. Jack, white-faced, gave him a glum look. Then he left the building.

He sulked out to the parking lot, and when he reached the car, he socked the mirror good, so good that the sky became closer than it appeared.

“You shouldn’t do that.” Piper says.

Jack stares at the wheel. He’s in the car. Things are rigid.

“Why?”

“Because you’ll break something. Duh.”

“More? The back door is out, the boot is crap, the axle is shredded. How can you break something that’s already broken?”

“Remember the mailbox? And how Mom hit it with the car and then the mailman hit it before she could fix it? And then ants started living in it so you set it on fire? And then you hit it with a wood when the ants didn’t go away?”

“Yes.” 

“Well that was breaking something that was already broken. And what about when I fell off the swing? And then I got a cast on my leg and then I fell down the stairs and broke the cast and my foot.”

She gives him a syrupy look.

Her eyes were very blue, bluer than the reflection in the driver’s side mirror. Her hair was blonde and dangling around her face like a dandelion crown. Put it up, he always told her, it’ll get stuck in the window, he said. That only happened once, and it was an absolute nightmare, especially because he had to listen to Piper sob feverishly for two hours after she saw that the clump of hair in the window was no longer attached to her head.

Jesus Christ, she cried longer than when her own mother bit the dust.

That hadn’t stopped Jack from loving her, of course.

“You’re right, Piper. You’re so right. You’re so right about everything.”

“You know what that’s called, Dad?”

Jack starts the car and it rumbles like a New England sky. “Sarcasm.” he answers duly.

Piper nods. “I learned that in a Junie B Jones book.”

“You don’t read Junie B Jones anymore.”

“I learned it a long time ago, Dad. Duh.”

Jack leaves sighs and leaves the parking lot, leaves Bernard Road, leaves Taylor behind him on the highway.

“Why is it called a highway?” She’s watching the sky and drawing faces on the window. It’s the time of year where you vegetate your boat and pull out the skies.

“Because it’s an elevated roadway.”

“Is that sarcasm?”

“No.”

“It sounds like sarcasm.”

“It’s not.”

The back seat has a briefcase on one seat, a stuffed sheep on the other. The front seat has a girl about eight years old with blonde hair and blue eyes and a knack for answering her own questions before anyone else can. 

“How do planes fly? It’s their wings, isn’t it? Are they like dragonflies? Yeah, I guess they kind of are…”

After some time of things like this, she asks a question that she can’t answer by herself.

“Did you get the job?”

Jack stares at the cars. The one next to him has a whole family inside. They’re smiling. 

“No.”

“Is that why you punched the mirror?”

She knows the answer, and Jack knows she knows, so he doesn’t answer. A paradox probably. 

It’s silence.

Then, Piper has the gallantry to ask, “Why didn’t you get the job?”

Sometimes, words linger like helicopters. This is one of those times. 

“They said it was because I have too much personal baggage.”

“What’s that?”

“Things like you and Mom and life outside of work might distract me.”

She waits for a very long time, seemingly more interested in the tops of the buildings than her father’s answer. Then she looks over at him.

“Why do they call it ‘personal baggage’ and not ‘grief-case’?” 

She spits out this elite pun without a hint of irony. 

Jack laughs. 

“I don’t know, Piper. I really don’t.”

He really doesn’t. He really doesn’t know a lot of things, like why he thought Mom’s cancer wasn’t bad enough to take her to the specialist in Merrifield.

She’s called Piper because of the Paul McCartney song that was played at the wedding and at the funeral. She was named before the funeral, obviously. When they gathered in the cemetery that day, she happened to perk up like a puppy every time the word ‘pipes’ was sung. She was just a baby then.

“Every story has a point.” she declares.

“I suppose.”

“So what’s the point of the mailbox story?”

“With the ants?”

“Yeah. Why do you tell that one so much?”

Jack sighs and changes lanes. The blinker ticks quietly. “ I suppose I tell it so much because it’s funny, but I suppose the point is that I can’t really control what I do when I’m upset, and that’s a bad thing.”

“Is it really a bad thing?”

“I would say so.”

“Why?”

Jack sort of lets that settle. He supposes he knows why. Jack supposes a lot of things. “Because I can do dumb things when I’m upset.”

“Like punch the mirror?”

Jack laughed a little, or as much as he allowed himself to. Piper smiled her honey smile. Then there was a screech, a smash, and there’s blood all over her face and a dent in her head and her eyes aren’t blue anymore. 

It’ll be okay.

It’ll be okay.

It’s been an hour, and Piper’s announced her hunger, so Jack stops at a Taco Bell off Exit B-17. Taco Bell, because Piper refuses to eat at any other fast food place. Mostly on account of what she read in her Girl Scout manual: that Taco Bell has the most nutritious food of any other fast food place. Jack just likes it because it’s cheap. And Jack supposes he mine as well eat at the most nutritious fast food place if he’s going to eat fast food at all.

“Did Mom like Taco Bell?” she asks while they eat in the parking lot. Because Jack doesn’t like eating while driving.

“I remember her as more of a McDonald’s person.” Jack answers. Piper makes a face. 

“Was she fat?”

“Not until she was pregnant with you.”

“That was because of me, though. Not because of McDonald’s.”

“Right.”

The snow is starting to fall again. It reminds Jack of the dandelion puffs that she always loved. They’re weeds, he’d say. Why do love weeds so much? 

Because weeds have inhibitions, she’d reply with a smile. Jack always thought that was stupid, but he supposes inhabitions make weeds more relateable. 

“How long did you know Mom before I was born?” Piper asks. She has orange taco sauce rimming her mouth so Jack passes her a napkin and taps her on the nose. 

“Thirteen years.” Jack replies. “I met her my Sophomore year in high school and we got married exactly ten years later.” He looks out the window at the snow again, the passing cars, the poles laced in ice that mothers’ warned you not to lick. “Two years later, you were born.” 

Piper looks at him softly for a moment, as if expecting him to say more, but when he doesn’t, she looks down, where there are balls of Taco Bell wrapping paper sleeping just below her feet; feet that fail to touch the floor.

“Do you miss her?”

Late crows fly southwest. Jack thinks about the job he failed to get, Mr. Lee, the hospital, the Focus, the crash. He thinks about a lot of things all at once, so many things that he almost gets what one might call a ‘cranial burst’.

“Of course I miss her, Piper.”

“Is that why you never married anyone else?”

Jack sighs and tosses the rest of his garbage on the floor. “I suppose it is, Piper.”

“Because Pastor Red said that it’s illegal to marry anyone else, even after your first spouse dies.”

“Pastor Red said that?”

She looks soggy-faced. “Well, I said illegal. He just said you’re not supposed to.”

“Then I guess I’m following Pastor Red’s rules.” 

Piper nods. “I wish I met her.”

He looks at her face, which is silver in the near-winter light. Her eyes are like emeralds now, wet ones, and her lips the fallout of a crumbled smile. Jack can feel the soreness in her heart as he looks at her; the ache is contagious. 

“You did.” he grunts and clears his throat. “You met her when you were first born. You were in a pink blanket and she was holding you up to her face. You smiled.”

“Babies don’t smile.” she creaks.

“Baby-Piper did.”

Piper brings up her legs, crosses them on the seat, and everything is bright again. That’s the strange thing about dealing with kids: the mood changes more than a midwestern Doppler, and with the consistency of deaths in a car accident.

They’re back on the highway, an hour from home. Cars are all over, doing things that cars do. The sky is greying and the day is dying. Jack notices the seatbelt situation after double-taking. 

“Put your seatbelt on, Piper.”

“Why…?” she groans.

“Put it on right now.”

“It’s uncomfortable.”

“I’m gonna pull over, Piper. You put it on right now.”

She sighs and clicks the buckle into place. “There.”

“Never try to sneak that by me again, Piper.” 

“Okay…”

“You’re smarter than that.”

She doesn’t respond. Piper doesn’t like it when Jack tells her she’s smarter than that. Jack doesn’t like it when Piper doesn’t wear her seatbelt. 

She never liked wearing a seatbelt. 

“I have to pee.”

“Why didn’t you say that at the Taco Bell?”

“I didn’t have to pee then.”

“It was five minutes ago!”

“So? Doesn’t change reality, Dad. Reality can’t change because of stating facts, Dad.”

Jack feels his face flushing. “I thought girls are supposed to be able to hold it.”

“Scout Leader Mary said you should always use the bathroom as soon as you feel you need to.”

“Well, Staff Sergeant Kowalski told me in the Coast Guard Academy that your bladder can last eleven hours before bursting, so you better hold it in until that happens.”

“You want me to wait for my bladder to burst?”

“We’re less than an hour from home!”

“I’m gonna pee on the seat and then you’ll have to smell it for weeks.”

She holds her breath. Jack rolls his eyes and takes the next exit. It’s not a big deal.

They’re low on gas anyway.

He fills it up, then takes Piper to the bathroom. Luckily, there will be no bladder bursting today, or hopefully any day for that matter. He buys her a candy bar- a Twix -even though she doesn’t ask for it. He knows that she likes them, even though they’re unhealthy and all.

The gas station is quiet and empty. The windows are dirty. Two men smoke while a little boy watches.

“Right or left?” she asks once they’re in the car again. 

“Left.” 

She hands him a twig of chocolate. “I think the right or left thing is dumb.” she states through a gooey mouth. 

“Why?” Jack asks, starting the car. The fresh fumes nip his tongue. 

“Because it’s all relative. Like, what if you hold the bar upside down?”

Jack doesn’t have any response to that one. Sometimes, his daughter sucks the words right out of his mouth. He supposes that’s one of the reasons he loves her.

They’re not going to make it onto the highway for a while. The roads on the way there are passing by at their sides, one sign after another, and the entrance to the bridge is right ahead. But traffic oozes, and soon, Jack and Piper become stuck in front of a Burger King and Crapo Street, which is lined with run-down houses and bars that have long since been shut down for too many healthcode violations. Jack sighs. Piper sighs. Like father like daughter, sometimes not even on purpose. Jack supposes that’s the point of having kids. 

“Why does traffic happen? Because so many cars are going one place?”

“Yep.”

“But that’s stupid.” she points out her window at Crapo Street. “That road right there is completely empty, but everyone's over here. What’s wrong with that direction?”

“Everyone needs to go this way, probably.”

“But why? There should be a rule that if one road is empty and one road is full, some cars from the full road have to go on the empty one to make everything nice and even.”

“You’ve just described the communist manifesto.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Good.” 

He looks out his window groggily, wondering about a lot of things, like why the two hour drive home was taking so long, where he would look for a job next, what sort of Soviet propaganda has Piper been getting into lately. He looks back at her, and she’s playing rock-paper-scissors with herself. “You know, Piper…” he says. “I do know how to play that game.”

“That would be distracted driving.” she says without looking up.

“We’re not even moving.”

“The Girl Scout Manuel said to never distract a driver at the wheel, so I’m not gonna. Besides,” this time, she looks up. “I like actual competition.”

“Touche.”

He looks past her hair, more dirty than blond, and notices movement on Crapo Street, close to the end. There’s a girl on a blue bike who looks just like Piper; around eight, blond hair, more dirty than blond, and blue jeans. She’s going down the sidewalk very slowly, and Jack wonders if anyone ever told her that you’re supposed to bike on the road. 

Suddenly, there’s a car going fast as it turns onto Crapo from the far end, coming toward Jack, but slows down as it nears the girl on the bike. It’s a grey Saturn with tinted windows; a cheap, old looking car. Jack watches as it comes to almost a complete stop near the girl. 

The car behind Jack honks and he jumps a little. Piper is smiling and the gap in front of the Focus is widening as the cars ahead in the lane move forward about ten feet.

“He wants you to drive, Dad.” she says.

“Oh, hush you.” Jack answers, moving the car to catch up with the one in front of him. Suddenly, there’s a screech from far away, and Jack turns to look at Crapo Street. The Saturn is doing a u-turn and the girl is gone. All that’s left is the blue bike, tipped on its side. 

The wheels are still spinning. 

“What…” Jack mutters. He realizes all at once what’s happened and yanks the Focus out of the left lane. A couple cars around him honk and Piper grabs onto the dashboard. 

“What are you doing, Dad?” Piper exclaims. Jack peels off the road to the highway, heart pounding, and bounces onto Crapo Street. The Saturn is disappearing to the left and into a residential area. Jack gives chase. 

“What are you doing, Dad?” Piper asks again, her face the dictionary reference for panic. 

“I’m going after that car.” he answers dauntlessly. “That girl’s been kidnapped.” 

I’m so sorry for your loss, he says. Right, right, everyone is, aren’t they. Everyone’s so sorry for my loss but what difference does it make? They’re both gone now. They’re both gone, and what do we have to show for it? A new bill for a new car. That’s it. 

Jack has three things in his head: the scan from the hospital revealing dark spots on the chest, the windshield, which has a perfectly shaped hole in it, rounded with blood like Piper’s mouth would be with taco sauce, and the fact that every girl he sees on the street seems to look like her, and he just wants to pull up and ask her how she escaped the cemetery and where she got that pretty bicycle.

In addition, Jack seems to have misinterpreted the speed limit sign in this residential area, because it says fifteen, but evidently, he sees sixty five. Unfortunately, the Saturn is somehow encompassing a speed faster than that. 

Piper is clutching the dashboard, screaming something about how Jack should slow the heck down before he crashes the car.

“Dad! Slow the heck down, before you crash the car, Dad!”

Jack keeps speeding. It’s a gallant and definitely not illegal effort to chase down the kidnapper. Much more responsible drivers are screeching out of the way as the chase roars by, but soon, the chase reaches the highway, where the speed limit grows to seventy.

“What are you doing, Dad?!” Piper yips.

“I’m chasing down that grey car.” he replies, eyes deadset on the road. “Whoever’s in there kidnapped that girl.”

“You need to call the police, Dad…” she says. “The Girl Scout Manuel says you should always call the police when a situation is getting out of-”

He rubs his forehead and clamps his mouth shut. Piper doesn’t even smile, as if the situation may have a little more gravity than her jokes are accustomed to. She’s looking out her window and Jack is looking out his, driving fast, eyes still focussed on the grey car, which is still in front of him. The windows are tinted, so he can’t see if the girl is sitting up inside, nor if the driver is a man or not, nor any other details that the police will certainly be interested in. He can only assume that the driver is a man. Jack supposes only men can do stupid things like snatch a girl right off the road and not expect another man to follow, ready and willing to pull the kidnapper out of the car and beat him to a pulp right on the street. That is the exact thing Jack Robles plans to do once he catches the Saturn.

Jack supposes that those parlous instincts are why he’s not a cop. Jack supposes he’s never been very good at settling things diplomatically. 

But he doesn’t care. 

Not when it comes to this. 

The cars on the road form a lurid river.

They’ve been following him for close to twenty minutes. 

Piper hasn’t spoken, and Jack keeps checking to make sure she’s still wearing her seatbelt. The stuffed sheep is now on the floor, suffocating slowly.

Then there’s traffic, and traffic doesn’t care about anybody.

Then the grey Saturn is gone.

“What the…” Jack mutters, looking around at the bajillions of cars around him. Somehow, none of them are grey Saturns, and he can’t seem to find even the wrong one. It’s as if it dissolved into the clouds and Jack even looks up at the sky with some strange hope that he might find the car up there. No luck.

“Keep your eyes peeled for a grey Saturn.” Jack tells Piper. “It looks like a box on wheels.”

“Can I skin my eyes instead of peel them?” Piper asks.

“Enough.”

“Why? I was just making a joke.”

“Your jokes are stupid.”

He doesn’t really think that, but he’s quite agitated at the moment. Flustered, distraught, beside himself; you choose. After a while of moving one inch at a time and still not finding the Saturn, Jack realizes he’s going the wrong direction from Gary, which means, Batman-style justice or not, he won’t be getting home for a while. He sits back and releases a deep breath. Piper makes a genius suggestion.

“You should call the police, Dad.”

She’s right. Jack scratches his head and pulls out his cellphone. Piper nods, as if she knew he was going to do what she suggested all along. Piper’s smart like that. That’s one of the reasons Jack loves her.

“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”

“There’s been a kidnapping. A girl about eight was taken right off the road by somebody in a grey Saturn on Crapo Street in Jordan. I chased the car onto the highway and now we’re at Mile 19 of I-75.”

“How quickly are you moving?”

“Not at all. I’ve lost visual on the Saturn.”

“Did you catch the plate number of the Saturn?”

“Ohh…umm...” he cups his hand over the phone and looks around for the Saturn again. Still gone. He did, in fact, not catch the plate number. The regret begins to set in. 

He turns to Piper. 

“Did you happen to see the plate number, Piper?” he asks desperately. 

“A-N-N-I-E-1-3.” she replies. Jack lets out a breath and doesn’t even question how Piper remembers that. 

“Thank you…The plate number is A-N-N-I-E-1-3.” he says into the phone. The operator tells him they’re going to take care of the situation. Jack hangs up.

“So that’s it…” Piper says. “We don’t have to chase anymore.”

“I guess not.” Jack replies. “We’ll head home as soon as this mess clears up.”

That’s the plan.

Let us show them how to play the pipes of peace…

They’re dancing at the wedding. The flowers are bright blue, because that’s her favorite color. And now it’s been thirteen years and she’s going into the ground very slowly and the hole is starting to fill itself in without help from the shovels and the flowers are white. It won’t be long before there is another body right next to hers. But no one is prepared for that now. Why would anyone be prepared for that now?

But every girl looks just like her, and he just wants to pull up to her and ask her how she escaped the cemetery and where did she get that pretty bike and why is your skull missing pieces because the guy at the lab was supposed to put it back together. 

It’ll be okay.

Play the pipes of peace.

Jack and Piper are stopped near an exit. Piper is as confused as an eight year old girl might be in a situation like this and Jack is as confused as an eight year old girl might be in a situation like this. The cops have been called. The incredibly vague advice of the Girl Scout Manuel has been followed. The kidnapper is screwed. 

That’s the situation, and the plan is to go home now because it no longer involves Jack and his daughter, Piper, who was named after a Paul MacCartney song.

That’s the plan.

They say that it’s the plan.

For now, Jack needs a moment. Sometimes, adults need to take ‘moments’.

He can’t quite think of a situation he’s been in that was remotely like this. He wonders if the girl is doing okay, or if it’s possible she wasn’t even kidnapped. Maybe it was just a misunderstanding. If that were the case, then the guy in the Saturn would have a hell of a time explaining himself to the cops. Jack is mildly amused by this thought, or as amused as he can be.

“Are you okay, Daddy?” 

She never calls him Daddy. It’s Dad is Dad, Mom is Mom, and only in times of concern do we add the y. This means that Piper is concerned at the moment, and it’s now Jack’s job to make her un-concerned. 

Jack supposes that’s the point of having kids.

Jack supposes a lot of things. 

“I’m fine, Piper. I’m good.”

Piper thinks that her daddy’s gonna have to find a longer street for that dog. “Are you sure?”

“I’m always sure. Of everything.” Jack answers, unsure of anything. Piper does a thing with her eyebrows that shouts “I don’t buy it, Jack”, but doesn’t say anything more. 

They sit in the car, taking a moment. Piper probably has to use the bathroom but she isn’t saying anything because she knows Jack needs silence, even though Scout Leader Mary said you should always use the bathroom as soon as you feel you need to. 

I don’t give a crap, Piper probably thinks. Jack can read her like a book. 

“Do you need the bathroom, Piper?”

Piper sighs. Her nut’s been cracked. “Yes…” she answers sheepishly. 

“Alright. That’s okay. Don’t feel bad.”

Kids aren’t supposed to feel bad about having to use the bathroom, especially when they withhold that information from their parents so their parents can have a moment. 

Piper was always pretty insightful. That was one of the reasons Jack loved her.

They stopped at another gas station. 

This one was of the Shell variety. 

Everything was yellow. 

On theme, obviously, with the whole urine thing. 

Jack thought about buying Piper another chocolate bar but then decided not to, because he’s evil.

Now they’re in the car, and Jack hasn’t started the car yet and Piper is humming a little tune that would go well with a ukulele.

“Somewhere...over the rainbow...way up high…”

Jack is thinking about the Wizard Of Oz and how brilliant that movie was. He remembers when he was a kid growing up in Merrifield when he was in the play. Fourth grade, he played the Lion who wanted courage and whatnot. And then Jack is thinking that it’s kind of weird that he met her, married her, and watched her die in Merrifield, but he still put her in the ground in Gary. 

Maybe that’s what she wanted, maybe not, who cares? Dead men tell no tales, and dead women can’t complain. 

Piper isn’t singing anymore. 

“Daddy…” she mutters. And there’s the ‘daddy’, which means that everything is about to hit the fan and go to hell and fall apart and all the rest of the things that happen during catastrophes.

Jack looks up from Merrifield to the end of the parking lot. Some cars are parked there.

Obviously. 

“What’s wrong, Piper?” he asks. Piper tugs on his arm and points out the windshield. 

“That’s him. That’s the car.” she says with great concern. Jack looks to the road where a car is climbing up onto the highway. It’s going fast. It’s a grey Saturn. It has a license plate with five letters and two numbers. And no one else knows, but it has a girl inside. 

Jack wonders where the cops are.

Then he makes a decision. 

He drives out of the gas station as fast as he can and flings onto the highway, giving chase after the Saturn once again. Piper hits her head on the window because she isn’t buckled.

She’s never liked the buckle.

Jack always drove too fast. That’s what she always told him. One day, you’ll get someone killed, she said. Probably yourself. Jack agreed, but didn’t change. Because you only live once, and sometimes the skin cancer kills you before the hard cement does, so you may as well drive as fast as you want.

Let us show them how to play the pipes of peace…

Jack threw his computer and desk chair and punched one of his coworkers. 

Mr. Gerard fired him.

A “mental breakdown”, he said. “In grief”, he said. 

That’s why the midget didn’t hire him and that’s why the mirror to the Saturn is broken, because there was no little girl there to tell him not to keep punching the mirror.

Let us show them how to play the pipes of peace…

It’s the same story as an hour ago: Jack is driving too fast. 

The Saturn is way faster than the Focus, so Jack has to keep his foot nailed to the floor and his hands flipping the wheel to avoid the much more responsible drivers he’s flying past. He still can’t see through the windows of the Saturn, and suddenly, he wonders something important: why he’s chasing the kidnapper in the first place. 

Isn’t this why I called the cops?

Where the hell are they?

What am I even gonna do to stop this car?

Those are just some of the questions. Jack realizes that he has some serious decisions to make but he doesn’t really consider making them. He just keeps chasing the car without a real end goal because, frankly, people are stupid. 

Piper wishes she had any clue what to do in this situation. 

Now, if she could still wish, Piper would probably wish for a proper skull and the foresight to buckle up before Jack crashed his old Focus into a tree. 

Jack keeps driving. 

He calls the cops again, and they tell him they’re sending somebody. 

Jack starts talking to keep himself focussed. Oddly, it works.

“Are the Yankees gonna win the World Series this year, Piper?” he asks.

“Of course they are.”she answers. “It’s about time they do.”

“Does your Girl Scout Manuel say anything about sports?”

“Just that they’re good exercise. And there’s a volleyball badge and a tennis badge and a softball badge and a-”

“Okay. Quiet now.”

He’s chasing the car. He has no idea what he’s doing. Piper has no idea what he’s doing. He’s driving too fast.

She’s getting lowered into the ground right next to the other one. 

It’s the same colored eyes. 

They’re both wearing white dresses, even though it’s been six years. Jack remembers that very vividly.

It’s been twenty minutes. The Saturn is pulling off the highway. The Focus follows. Jack wonders if the kidnapper knows that he’s being chased. He will in a second, when I overtake him, pull him out of his seat, and beat the crap out of him.

Jack wishes he has a gun in the car so the whole overtaking thing will be easier. 

They’re driving on an extra long road. 

The city and highway sounds are dying, replaced by mooing and farms. The Focus and Saturn are now the only two cars within sight of each other, and they’re going very, very, very fast.

“Daddy…why do people kidnap?” Piper asks. Jack drives. “Daddy?”

“I guess I don’t know, Piper.” he answers. “Maybe just because...people do bad things a lot. Sometimes for no reason.”

“Like when they’re upset?”

“Right…”

“Do they do bad things because their brains are telling them to? Something in their hearts…Maybe it’s because they’re sad. Is that right?”

And silence but the tread on the road falls like snow. Piper answers her own question as always, this time in her face and broken body. 

Jack sees it.

He sees the little girl with the shattered skull.

He sees the broken windshield with the blood around it like taco sauce.

He sees the totalled car, the first thing, which he hardly had time to be upset about, because there she was, on the road, lifeless; the girl named after the Paul McCartney song. 

He sees her being lowered into the ground right next to her mom who died six years earlier, and he sees every girl on the street that looks just like her, so much so that he just wants to pull up and ask her how she escaped the cemetery and where she got that pretty bike. 

He sees it, the cancer, the fast car, the dirt falling into the grave.

There’s a certain kind of love. One that’s different from the rest. One that hides in the shadow of masculinity for years, but finally breaks out when he looks into her glistening eyes and touches her hair. It’s his own-- a tiny human, just like himself. But instead of a cleats, this one wears ballet shoes. Instead of trucks, this one plays with dolls. Something in that is callow...almost...scary. A kind of affection that drives a man mad when it’s taken away...

He hears the siren, and the cops are behind him. 

The Saturn stops and a man gets out. Jack screeches to a halt and leaves the car and Piper behind. 

The man tries to run into the cornfield but Jack tackles him and punches him. 

And he’s punching the mirror.

And the coworker.

The cops have arrived. Two cars, sirens, blue streaks, bee-woo, bee-woo and all that good stuff. They’re in uniform, and they grab Jack by the arms and pull him off the ground. 

He is the only man on that road. 

The Focus is gone, totalled a year and a half ago. 

It’s only the grey Saturn, and when the cops have put the kidnapper into the back of their car, they open the backseat of the Saturn to find a young girl with blond hair, more dirty than blond, blue eyes, and most likely, a knack for answering her own questions before anyone else can. 

She’s been crying.

On the seat next to her is a stuffed sheep.

Let us show them how to play the pipes of peace.

“Daddy...why do people kidnap?”

After the funeral, Daddy went to buy a new car to replace the one that he crashed into the tree. 

The same car his dad owned before he died, a Saturn, and this one was grey. 

And then he went and got a new plate for the car, one that would be customized to honor his late wife, whom he knew for thirteen years.

That’s what he told the lady. 

“That’s quite lovely and I’m sorry for your loss. What was her name? Sir?”

“What was your wife’s name, sir?”