Until that moment, the ride had been familiar enough to feel harmless. Maya hated silence, considered red lights a personal inconvenience, and believed that a few glasses of wine qualified her to improve on satellite navigation. “Left,” she had announced two blocks earlier, pointing with absolute confidence toward a street that would have taken us away from her apartment. When I reminded her that home was to the right, she said she was testing me, then accused my turn signal of sounding judgmental.
Now there was no joke waiting behind her smile. Her fingers rested loosely around the strap of her purse, and she was watching me with an openness I had almost never seen on her sober face. I was twenty-eight, she was twenty-four, and for three years I had known what to do when she needed a ride, a second opinion, or someone to answer the phone after midnight. Apparently, I had no idea what to do when she needed the truth.
