A Song for the Road

left the interstate for the two-lane roads of West Virginia, she had a headache.
The scenery was fabulous, though. At the top of a mountain, she pulled off at an overlook to stretch, squat, and generally bring her butt back to life. The wind whispered in the pines. Before her, the ridges lined up, marching across the landscape in neat rows, each one bluer and hazier than the one in front of it.
Miriam massaged her neck and pulled out her phone to snap a picture, then uploaded it to the app. Alleghenies, she typed. Like folds of cake batter. #Gr8AmAdven.
The photo took forever to upload. At last, she got back on the road and pressed on with only the radio for company. If you could call it “company” when it kept dipping into bursts of static. Anyway, it kept her mind occupied. And right now, that was a very good thing. She could feel panic nosing around back there, looking for an entry point.
The next static break went on and on. Miriam’s breaths shortened. The worst thing about anxiety was the way it made a person feel claustrophobic inside her own body.
She punched the Bluetooth. “Call work,” she said, and the static flipped over to her cell connection.
“St. Gregory the Great, this is Becky. May I help you?”
“Becky, it’s Miriam.” Already the pressure behind her eyes had eased.
“Hi! How’s it going? I saw your post. Pretty picture.”
“Yeah, it’s beautiful.” Miriam glanced at the sunlight flashing between the trees—still mostly bare at this elevation—that crowded either side of the road. “Very remote too. I don’t think I’ve passed more than a dozen cars since I got off the interstate.”
“Aren’t you glad I made you take my car now?”
Except for the headrest. “Yes, thank you.” There, that was an appropriate response. She wasn’t a complete sociopath. “So how are things at work?”
“Oh, the usual. Overflowing toilet. Complaints about Father’s homily.”
Miriam chuckled. “I won’t miss that. Have fun.”
Silence.
“Becky?”
Miriam picked up her phone and punched the screen. Call failed. She redialed before she saw the words No signal in the corner. Well, crap.
She dropped the phone, and the speakers reverted to the static on the radio dial.
She glanced at the string of beads hanging from the rearview mirror. She could always say a rosary, but she suspected the lulling rhythm of prayers would either put her to sleep or enable the panic. She needed distraction, not meditation.
She hit the “Scan” button on the radio. The screen flew through the numbers. When it rounded the dial and started over, Miriam grabbed the top CD on the stack she’d brought.
The static disappeared into the jaunty sound of Teo’s favorite Argentine folk recording. Miriam’s heart expanded and contracted at the same time, which mostly meant it hurt. So much in her life had become foreign territory since her family died, it seemed almost criminal to feel such a pang of loss for the Friday night jam sessions. Teo and his group of expat Argentine musicians had packed themselves onto the front porch till there was barely room to squeeze through. Women sat in fold-up chairs on the lawn, chatting while their kids ran around the yard with Popsicle-stained T-shirts. The folding table bowed in the middle with the weight of the potluck, and the smell of beer and liquor flavored the hot air.
Talia would squeeze in beside Teo on the porch swing and sing while he strummed. Blaise claimed a tenuous perch on the railing, where he’d use his thighs, or even the spindles, as drums.
Miriam spent those nights running in and out the door, ferrying ice and refilling glasses. Like her mother before her, she’d been driven to do, do, do. And yet while she was pretending to be the perfect hostess, the music had seeped into her bones.
“Come sit a spell, Sassafras,” Teo used to say. Why had she never done it? It would have meant so much to him.
Miriam twisted the volume knob until the rhythmic melodic energy almost overwhelmed her. She’d never hear her GPS over it.
Come to think of it, the GPS hadn’t spoken for quite a while. She glanced down. The satellite image had reverted to the green and tan of a traditional map. The dot indicating her location moved slowly along the blue line.
By the time Miriam drove into Green Bank—little more than a handful of buildings strung along the highway—she was famished. She pulled off at what looked like the only convenience store in town. On the curb in front sat a young biracial woman, her wiry hair corralled into dozens of short pigtails. She was flanked by a ridiculously large green backpack and a roll-around suitcase plastered with travel stickers. Waiting for a bus, maybe.
Miriam went inside and grabbed a prewrapped sandwich and a Pepsi. The clerk seemed too caught up in his conversation with another customer—a conversation about the state of one marriage or the other; Miriam couldn’t tell whose—to notice that Miriam wanted to ask a question. So she went back outside.
“Excuse me,” she said to the young woman with the suitcase.
The girl raised her head. Only then did Miriam notice the bump around her middle, big enough to force her knees apart. And the bleak expression in her dark eyes.
Miriam knew exactly how it felt at the intersection of those two particular qualities.
She locked her knees to keep from bolting. “Sorry to bother you, but they seemed kind of busy in there.” Amazing. She sounded cool and calm and totally put together. “I’m trying to get to the telescope, but I lost my cell signal.” She held up her phone and quirked a smile. “Guess I’ll have to have a talk with my provider.”
The girl’s expression did not change. “Nobody has cell service here. This is the radio quiet zone.”
“Oh.” Miriam wondered what precisely a radio quiet zone was, but she didn’t really want to extend the conversation. That lost look scared her. “Well,” she said, gesturing with her phone, “Google doesn’t seem to have lost