Lillian did love the fall. She could still be outside, and she loved to see the leaves change. Every day, another splash of color to enjoy. When it was raining she didn’t venture off the porch. And once it got cold, she’d watch the street’s events from the living room window. She didn’t read that much anymore. There was a time she could read a book a day — there were so many Danielle Steel novels to gobble up that Lillian wondered if that woman didn’t write one every day — but it was harder for her to concentrate now, and watching the world go by demanded less brainpower and was often more entertaining.
Although, if there was a downside — and didn’t everything have a downside? — sitting out here also gave her time to think. And what she was thinking was what her son, the chief of police, might be planning to do with her. He’d been talking more and more about this or that seniors’ home. How nice it would be for her to have her meals made for her. How wonderful it would be to have people to socialize with every day. How convenient it would be to just press a button whenever she had a problem and someone would come running. How positively splendid it would be, when you had to go to the bathroom, not to have to take a weewee in your Depends while you waited for Daniella to show up? Okay, maybe Joe had not actually said positively splendid or weewee but he had hinted that very sentiment.
So he was ready to have her locked away somewhere. Lillian had a pretty good idea why, too. He’d met some woman. Sandy or Sandra or something. Sure, he’d met other women over the years, but things had never gotten serious enough with any of them to make Lillian worry that their living arrangements might change.
Before her more recent decline, if Joe had decided to set her up in her own apartment, she probably could have managed on her own. But now that she was increasingly disabled, Joe couldn’t take that route. He had to find her a home if he met someone and wanted to have some woman move in with him. Three of them under the same roof, that would never work.
Soon as I carry you over the threshold, could you help my mom find her teeth?
Yeah, that would go over well. Lillian could only hope this latest romance would end the way all the others had. Joe had a tendency to push too hard, scare the girls off. Maybe he’d do that with this one, and then Lillian wouldn’t have to worry about—
Now that’s funny.
The red Arrival parked in the Smitherses’ driveway, two doors up, was quietly backing out onto the street. Once there, it straightened and headed for the business district of downtown Garrett.
Maybe what she’d seen wasn’t so strange, after all. Couldn’t you summon one of these cars with your phone? Just tell it where you were and it would come and get you? And didn’t the Smitherses walk to work in the morning? Maybe one of them needed the car and didn’t want to have to go home and get it.
Yes, that was probably what happened. They—
Well, there goes another one.
A yellow Arrival, five doors up the other way — Lillian didn’t know their names, they never acknowledged her when she saw them walk by and she said hello — was doing the same thing. Backing onto the street and heading off.
Over the next couple of minutes, she saw five cars without passengers head down Gilbert Street.
What a world, she thought. The changes she’d seen in her lifetime. Could she have imagined, when she was a little girl, that one day cars would drive themselves? That all you’d have to do to get someplace would be to say a few words to your Chevy or your Ford or your DeSoto — oops, dating myself there, she thought — and before you knew it, you were at your destination. She’d been afraid to ride in an Arrival until her son persuaded her it was perfectly safe. The little car — a special one equipped with a police radio and lots of other equipment — had taken them all over the island one day. She’d been nervous at first, but by the time the car had brought them home, she thought it was the greatest thing since the invention of the heating pad.
So all over town, she surmised, people were telling their cars to haul ass and come pick them up. No more waiting around for a strange taxi. It was nothing short of amaz—
What in the Sam Hill was that?
An awful noise from the west end of the street. A distant tree partially obstructed her view, so she leaned forward slightly to see around it. She was trying to think what the sound reminded her of. Like dropping a sack of potatoes off a tall building.
But a sack of potatoes didn’t scream.
There was an Arrival coming down the street. Well, duh, she thought. Like, what else would it be? A white one, but with splotches of something on the sloped hood.
Red splotches.
The car was moving swiftly, above the posted speed limit, Lillian was certain. That seemed odd, considering these cars were programmed to obey all the rules.
As the car got closer, those red splotches became more vivid.
Could they be... blood?
Had the car hit a pedestrian? That seemed unthinkable, and looking up the street, she was relieved that she did not see anyone stumbling about, or lying on the pavement.
Aloud, she said to herself, “I wonder what—”
And then the white Arrival drove past her house.
Lillian Bridgeman felt her heart skip a beat, and placed her hand over her chest as if to check that it was still working.
The Arrival was dragging someone down the street. A body — Lillian couldn’t tell whether it was a man or woman, young or old — was caught on the car’s undercarriage, a dark, ghostly shadow beneath the car.
But there was still screaming.
It wasn’t coming from whoever was under the car, but from Lillian herself.
“Oh dear God,” she said. “Oh dear God.” She had no sooner said the words than the car slowed, coming to full stop about twenty yards past the end of her driveway.
It was as though it had heard her.
Lillian, while unaware of what, exactly, might be happening, suddenly felt very uneasy sitting out here, alone and exposed, at the end of the driveway. She wanted to get back in her house.
Something, clearly, was up with these cars. Those other ones, slipping away quietly all on their own, and now this.
The car slowly began to reverse. Its movements seemed almost cunning. There had been a sound, and now it wanted to find out what it was.
Lillian had a cell phone tucked down in the wheelchair, next to her butt, and briefly considered calling her son. But using her cell phone would leave her no hands free to move this chair. And how fast, realistically, could she expect Joe to get here?
If there were someone else on the street, someone she could shout to for help, someone who could quickly wheel her back up to the house, she’d have given that a try. But there was no one. And if her gut was right, that the car had stopped because it had heard her, she didn’t want to attract any more attention by raising her voice.
So she placed a hand atop each wheel and pushed back.
Squeak.