Chapter 6 - The 750-Mile Penance
The black 4Runner was flying across the asphalt of Interstate 15 North at ninety-five miles per hour, its engine screaming at five thousand RPMs.
Outside the windshield, the world was an endless, pitch-black void of the Mojave Desert, punctuated only by the occasional green reflective highway signs rushing past: *Mesquite, St. George, Cedar City.*
Jake’s hands were glued to the ten and two positions of the steering wheel, his knuckles white, bloodless, the skin stretched tight over the bone.
On the center console, the dashboard clock read: *11:42 PM.*
Denver was six hundred and eighty miles away. Even at eighty-five miles an hour without stopping, it was a ten-hour drive.
*Ten hours.*
"Please God," Jake sobbed aloud, his tears dripping unchecked off his chin onto his shirt. "Please God, just keep them alive. Take my hands, take my legs, take everything I have, just let me get there. Don't let her be alone. Please don't let her be alone."
The road began to climb steeply into the Virgin River Gorge, the highway narrowing between terrifying, jagged cliffs of black limestone. A sudden, violent gust of desert crosswind slammed into the side of the lifted truck, rocking it violently toward the concrete barrier. Jake fought the wheel, his tires squealing against the rumble strip, pulling the heavy vehicle back into the lane just as an eighteen-wheeler roared past in the opposite direction, horn blaring like the trumpets of the apocalypse.
He didn't slow down. He mashed the accelerator harder.
His phone buzzed in the cup holder.
He lunged for it, hitting the speakerphone button with a trembling thumb. "Clara?! Clara, please tell me—"
"Jake." It wasn't Clara. It was his mother.
Eleanor’s voice was shaking, stripped of all its haughty, polished composure. She was weeping.
"Mom? Are you at the hospital? How is she?"
"Jake, where are you?" Eleanor cried. "Why aren't you here? Clara called me twenty minutes ago. Maya is pushing. She’s already in the final stage. The baby’s heart rate was decelerating during the contractions because of the fall. They’re talking about an emergency vacuum delivery."
A strangled, animal sound tore out of Jake’s chest. He slammed his fist into the steering wheel, the horn letting out a frantic beep that died in the empty desert canyon.
"I’m in Utah, Mom! I’m in the middle of Utah! I’m driving as fast as the truck will go!"
"Utah?" Eleanor’s voice broke into pieces. "Jake, why did you go to Utah? Why didn't you stay with your wife?"
"Because you told me to!" Jake screamed into the empty cab, his voice raw, shredding his vocal cords. "You told me men need space! You told me Dad went to Santa Fe! You spent my entire life telling me that being a father was a cage that killed Dad, and I believed you!"
There was a silence on the other end of the line—a silence so profound it sounded like a building collapsing in slow motion.
"Jake…" Eleanor whispered, her voice smaller than he had ever heard it. "Your father didn't go to Santa Fe because he needed space. Your father went to Santa Fe with another woman. I lied to you. I lied to you for twenty years because I didn't want you to know what a coward he was."
The words hit Jake like a physical blow to the sternum.
He almost let go of the steering wheel. The truck drifted across the yellow line before he jerked it back.
His father hadn't been a trapped, tragic artist suffocated by the demands of a family. His father had been a selfish, weak, narcissistic coward who abandoned his responsibilities the second they required sacrifice. And Jake had spent his entire twenties worshiping that cowardice, wearing it like armor, using it as an excuse to run away from the only woman who had ever truly loved him.
He was Richard Miller.
He was his father, running through the desert while his son fought for his life in a sterile hospital room hundreds of miles away.
"I have to go, Mom," Jake said, his voice dropping into a hollow, dead whisper.
"Jake, wait—"
He hung up.
He slammed his foot down on the gas pedal until the speedometer needle touched one hundred. The desert rushed past like a black blur, but no matter how fast he drove, he knew the truth in his marrow:
The distance between him and Denver wasn't seven hundred miles.
May you like
It was a lifetime. And the bridge was already burning to ashes behind him.
***
