Dark Fire

"I'm so sorry," Ron sobbed. "I just didn't know what to do, how to make time go backward --"

"No more worries," she said gaily. She drove past their home, around the big loop of the freeway, and then started heading back into town. In the distance she could see the lights on the Sassafras Road bridge.

The big engine leapt to full power. "Where are we going?" asked Ron.

"Home," said Betty. "Our new old home. We'll be together forever and we'll be happy again."

The car surged past eighty, heading above one hundred. Ron struggled against the alcohol, trying to remain awake and make sense of why the streetlights were going by so quickly. Betty changed into the left lane and pushed the accelerator down harder. In Ron's addled mind, the poem played out over and over again, like the futile struggle to make sense of his infidelity and her love:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

She petted his hair again. Ron moaned. Over the wind noise Betty thought she heard her mother saying, "You'll become a functioning member of society, develop your own career, pay taxes, and have an accomplished husband." She heard Samantha hissing in her breath as Ron's tongue touched her clitoris. She heard Erin talking about how time could not be undone. She saw her painting come together, the colors knitting into shapes and textures for the final moment. She heard Ron saying, "I think I love you," in the courtyard of a college many hopeful decades ago.

Betty let her hand fall on his knee. His hand grasped hers. "We're going home, Ron," she said, as the Sassafras Road bridge grew larger and larger in front of them, her steering wheel pointed directly toward it.