Exiled (A Madame X Novel) (27 page)

He looks confused; I never drive. “Sir?”

“I said I’ll drive.”

“As you wish, sir.”

I take the driver’s seat, adjust the steering wheel, the mirrors, turn on the seat warmer. Tune the radio to something hard and heavy as Thomas slides into the front seat beside me. He seems ill at ease, tapping the dashboard with a long finger, tracing the stitching on his seat, fiddling with the lumbar settings.

I input a destination into the navi: Miami, Florida; nineteen hours and twenty-one minutes, it tells me.

Thomas is alert as we leave Manhattan.

He’s alert as we hit New Jersey.

He’s alert, and confused now as we pass the hotel that marks the farthest I ever made it from you.

“Sir?”

“Yes, Thomas?”

“Where are we going, sir?”

I tap the navi screen. “Miami. White sand beaches and bitches in bikinis.”

“And what about Miss Isab—”

“If you ever utter that name again, I will put a bullet between your eyes,” I hiss.

Thomas is unperturbed by my threat. Merely eyes me curiously. “You are done, then?” He waves a hand behind us. “With . . . all of that?”

I drive a long, long time in silence, considering his question. Am I?

I have to be.

I must be.

I do not know how to be done, but I must be.

I do not know how to start over, yet again, but I must.

Finally, after thirty miles, I answer. “Yes, Thomas. It is done.”

Thomas nods, tilts his seat back, crosses his massive arms over his broad chest, tugs his chauffeur cap down over his eyes. “Good. It is good.” Lower, more to himself, he murmurs something else: “Took a very long time. Too long, I think.”

“Fifteen years. That’s how long it took.”

But I don’t think Thomas heard me; he’s snoring already.

I put an entire tank of gas between us, three-hundred-some miles. Thomas sleeps while I refuel.

I put another tankful of gas between us.

Seven hundred miles.

You are seven hundred miles away, Isabel.

I stop somewhere in South Carolina. Pull off the road around dawn, nine hours after leaving Manhattan. I stand on the side of the road, heat on my back, joints stiff, eyes burning with exhaustion. I yawn, stretch.

Face north.

As if I could see you, even from here.

I can feel you, I think.

I can believe it is real now.

You are gone.

No,
I
am gone.

“Good-bye, Isabel.”

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