She put her arms around him and held him tightly. "Love you" she whispered into his neck. Ivy did believe him, and she trusted him as she trusted no one else. One day she'd have the nerve to say it, all of the words out loud. I love you, Tristan. She'd shout it out the windows. She'd string a banner straight across the school pool.
It took a few minutes to straighten themselves up. Ivy started laughing again. Tristan smiled and watched her try to tame her gold tumbleweed of hair-a useless effort. Then he started the car, urging it over the ruts and stones and onto the narrow road.
"Last glimpse of the river," he said as the road made a sharp turn away from it.
The June sun, dropping over the west ridge of the Connecticut countryside, shafted light on the very tops of the trees, flaking them with gold. The winding road slipped below, into a tunnel of maples, poplars, and oaks. Ivy felt as if she were sliding under the waves with Tristan, the setting sun glittering on top, the two of them moving together through a chasm of blue, purple, and deep green. Tristan flicked on his headlights.
"You really don't have to hurry," said Ivy. "I'm not hungry anymore."
"I ruined your appetite?"
She shook her head. "I guess I'm all filled up with happiness," she said softly.
The car sped along and took a curve sharply.
"I said, we don't have to hurry."
"That's funny," Tristan murmured. "I wonder what's-" He glanced down at his feet. "This doesn't feel…"
"Slow down, okay? It doesn't matter if we're a little late- Oh!" Ivy pointed straight ahead.
"Tristan!"
Something had plunged through the bushes and into the roadway. She hadn't seen what it was, just the flicker of motion among the deep shadows. Then the deer stopped. It turned its head, its eyes drawn to the car's bright headlights.
"Tristan!"
They were rushing toward the shining eyes.
"Tristan, don't you see it?"
Rushing still.
"Ivy, something's-" "A deer!" she exclaimed.
The animal's eyes blazed. Then light came from behind it, a bright burst around its dark shape. A car was coming from the opposite direction. Trees walled them in. There was no room to veer left or right.
"Stop!" she shouted. "1' m-" "Stop, why don't you stop?" she pleaded. "Tristan, stop!"
It was dazzling: the eye of the deer like a dark tunnel, the center of it bursting with light. Tristan braked and braked, but nothing would stop the rushing, nothing could keep him from speeding through the long funnel of darkness into an explosion of light.
For a moment he felt a tremendous weight, as if the trees and sky had collapsed on him. Then, with the explosion of light, the weight was lifted. Somehow he had gotten free.
She needs you.
"Ivy!" he called out.
The darkness swirled in again, the road around him like a Twirl-a-paint, black spinning with red, night swirling with the pulsing light of an ambulance.
She needs you.
He did not hear it, but he understood it. Did the others? "Ivy! Where's Ivy? You have to help Ivy!"
She was lying still. Bathed in red.
"Somebody help her! You've got to save her!"
But he could not hold on to the paramedic, could not even pull on his sleeve.
"No pulse," a woman said. "No chance."
"Help her!"
The swirling ran long and streaky now. Ribbons of light and dark rushed past him horizontally.
Was she with him? The siren wailed: I-veee. I-veee.
Then he was in a square room. It was day there, or as bright as. People were rushing around.
Hospital, he thought. Something was laid over his face, and the light was blocked out. He wasn't sure how long it was out.
Someone leaned over him. "Tristan." The voice broke.
"Dad?"
"Oh, my God, why did you let this happen?"
"Dad, where's Ivy? Is she okay?"
"My God, my God. My child!" his father said.
"Are they helping her?"
His father did not speak.
"Answer me, Dad! Why don't you answer me?"
His father held his face. His father was leaning over him, tears falling down on his face-My face, Tristan thought with a jolt. That's my face.
And yet he was watching his father and himself as if he were standing apart from himself.
"Mr. Carruthers, I'm sorry." A woman in a paramedic's uniform stood next to him and his father.
His father would not look at her. "Dead at the scene?" he asked.
She nodded. "I'm sorry. We didn't have a chance with him."