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the Expedition makes short work of it. America’s upper class is nothing if not prepared for a little impromptu off-roading.

    The road straightens out. Up ahead in the high beams she can begin to make out the old playground, two metal swing sets now devoid of swings and a rusty, slumping slide, all of it overgrown by weeds. Sue’s not sure whether this land was owned by the township or simply abandoned here by some private landowner, but at one point it was the choice make-out spot for a generation of townies, and not long afterward, a favorite place for local kids to hang out, just far enough away to require bicycles and determination.

    Beyond it is the bridge.

    It’s less than an eighth of a mile in the distance but to Sue it seems a whole world away. Like the tired little cluster of playground equipment and the road leading up to it, the bridge has never had any name that she knows of nor has it needed one. It is a lonely, one-lane structure buried deep enough in the woods that the only people who could find it would have to know these dark back roads inside and out and thus have been searching for it specifically, or have stumbled upon it completely by accident.

    Underneath the bridge is an overgrown swamp, two square acres at least, where a creek once flowed, long since dead. In the shadow of those rotten timbers, sunken beneath the stench of decaying leaves and plant life from decades before she was born, was the spot where something happened back in the summer of ’83.

    Sue feels her neck and back coiling forward as if somehow to muffle her accelerated heartbeat. Suddenly her mouth is full of sour adrenaline, its mercury drip in the back of her throat.

    There is a memory here, half-buried in the wintry hush of falling snow, a thing out of some child’s nightmare that years ago somehow made the leap into the real world.

    All at once her phone chirps.

    A great flutter of muscle causes her arms to fly up sideways, her left hand whacking the door.

    “Hello,” she manages.

    “You made it,” the voice says, sounding low and insolent, urgent, making her think of phone sex. “I’ve been waiting.”

    Waiting. Sue stares out into the dark woods, her entire body momentarily reduced to what feels like an enormous pair of eyes, darting and searching the thick blackness piled in layers around her. “Are you out there?”

    “What do you think?”

    Sue is breathing through her mouth. Her heart goes thump, thump. She can hear herself, her body doing its job, keeping her brain alive. Something vaguely reassuring about the lumbering way that it goes about its work. Come hell or high water it’s just another day at the cracker factory for the old human body.

    He is out here too, somewhere. In the darkness, she thinks, very nearby. Perhaps under the bridge waiting for her or even closer. With the trees and the darkness and the snow, he could almost be close enough to touch.

    “What do you want me to do?” she asks. She thinks reflexively of those girls in the 1-900 ads they run in the back of the Boston Phoenix and the comparison, though jarring, is not without validity. Hi, my name’s Sue. Tonight I’ll do whatever you want. Just name it. Sue can practically hear her friend Natalie rolling her eyes, saying, Please, but right now that’s how the voice on the phone has made her feel. Tonight she is his fear whore.

    “Stop the car and get out. Keep the phone with you.”

    Sue puts the Expedition in park and cuts the engine. Doing this she thinks only of Veda, but now apprehension for herself has joined her fear for her daughter. She opens the door and slides down and out into the cold air. Her jacket bunches up momentarily around her waist, allowing for the blade of the wind to graze her bare skin, and she shudders, an all-over tremble that spreads from her extremities inward to the base of her spine. Without thinking she puts on her gloves and stuffs her left hand in her pocket.

    Her eyes water and her