Unthinkable

by Nancy Werlin

  Say it, Fenella. Turn him down. The quick cut is the best, and most merciful too.

  Fenella looked into Walker’s eyes. “My cat’s still settling in.”

  “Yes, but we could try it.”

  “I don’t want to take the risk.”

  Good! Now, dismiss him. Say, “Go away and take the dog with you.” Then turn your back and walk upstairs. He won’t follow.

  Fenella knew Ryland was right. She said to Walker, “I don’t want lunch. What I want is to learn to drive your truck.”

  She didn’t know which noise came next: Ryland’s infuriated snort, or Walker’s laugh.

  When Walker laughed, his skin crinkled up around his brown eyes. “Okay. Put on some shoes and we’ll go. Listen, a small truck like mine isn’t much different from a car. It’s not like a big rig. You’ll be able to drive it easily. Wait. You’ve driven a manual transmission before? Or have you only driven an automatic?”

  Fenella gave a noncommittal smile. She had read about manual and automatic transmissions in the book about how things worked. Of course, she had never driven a car, period, but that only meant she didn’t have any bad habits to unlearn. “I’ll be right back,” she said.

  She ran upstairs, Ryland beside her, his paws thudding softly on the stairs, his voice yelling in her head. Once they were safely in her bedroom, she whirled on him and whispered, “I know what I’m doing.”

  No, you don’t. What’s going on? How can you drive that truck?

  “I just want to. I’m sure I can do it. I read the book. I watch when others drive.” Fenella fished her bra out of the bureau and yanked it into place. “It doesn’t look difficult.”

  It’s complicated. Even I only know how to drive an automatic.

  “You can drive?” Fenella stopped what she was doing for a moment to stare. “How did that happen?”

  The cat scowled. When I was on my mission last year. I was in human form. It was when my sister was messing up. Don’t ask.

  Fenella shrugged. She finished dressing and then tied sneakers on her feet. Before leaving, she engaged in one last staring contest with the cat.

  Fine. Go. The cat’s eyes narrowed.

  “I am.” She hurtled down the stairs. She was going to drive the truck!

  “Have you driven a manual before?” Walker asked her again.

  “No, but I understand the principle involved.” Fenella walked confidently to the driver’s side of the truck.

  Since that first day with Walker, Fenella had ridden in other vehicles. Most of the family shared a car, and Leo had a big van that was often filled up with instruments. She liked the feeling of movement in both the car and the van, but neither had induced in her the joy and exhilaration that she had felt while sitting next to Walker in his truck, or the deep interest she had felt looking under the hood of the family car and identifying the parts of the engine.

  Nonetheless, when they went out in the family vehicles, she often asked to sit in front. She watched closely to learn how the vehicles were controlled. And of course, The Way Things Work had an excellent section on automobiles.

  She knew she could drive. She knew it.

  But Walker shook his head. “If you’re used to an automatic, it’ll take a while to get the hang of things with a manual. Like, several lessons. Which is fine.” He looked quite cheerful. “Tell you what. I’ll drive us somewhere out of the way where you can practice without any other cars around.”

  Fenella bit her lip, disappointed not to take the wheel immediately. “Okay.”

  “There’s this place about forty minutes up Route 2. It’s not, like, a Sunday morning when I can find an empty parking lot here in the city.”

  “I s ee.”

  “I’ll call Soledad and tell her where we are, in case she worries.”

  “Good idea.” Fenella got into the truck on the passenger side, buckled herself in professionally, and watched Walker drive. He used his right hand to execute the manual shifting of gears that the book had described. This shifting was not necessary with an automatic transmission, the book said, but some drivers preferred manual shifting because it gave you more control over your vehicle.

  More control. More power. Fenella liked that. Her hands and feet itched to take over.

  They were on a highway now and going fast. It was still a populated area, but trees grew thickly on both sides of the road, so that it felt almost as if the highway was cut through a forest. Fenella smiled, thinking of her friends the tree fey.

  “I was born to drive,” she said impulsively.

  Walker laughed. Such a warm sound, Fenella thought. Warm and lovely.

  He said, “How long have you had your license? Two years? Massachusetts lets you get it at sixteen, isn’t that right?”

  “I don’t really know,” Fenella said vaguely. “I’m from Eng land.”

  “You don’t have a British accent.”

  “I guess I don’t.”

  “Are you used to driving on the other side of the road? Or did you never drive in England, only here in the U.S.?”

  “Oh,” said Fenella. “I can drive here.”

  Walker said, “Me, I’ve been driving a long time. I drove farm equipment before I got my legal license. My family has a farm. Also, it’s less complex to drive where there isn’t much traffic, where I’m from. Plus, Boston drivers are crazy. At home, everybody follows the rules. Here, you never know.”

  Fenella was feeling relaxed; she’d gotten through his question about a driver’s license without an outright lie. She watched the thick green trees along the highway. “I like the trees here,” she said. “I like that there are so many of them.”

  “Eastern hardwood forest,” said Walker, nodding. “Beautiful. The land here was cleared a couple hundred years ago for crop farming, but the trees are coming back strong. It’s a relief to see how the land can restore itself, isn’t it? Also, these are terrific trees. Out west, where I’m from, we don’t have this diversity. We have a lot of conifers, not so much hardwood.”

  “Where are you from?” Fenella asked.

  “Southeastern Washington state, near the Idaho and Oregon borders.”

  “That’s far.” Fenella often consulted an atlas that the family kept, marveling at the largeness and variety of the human world. “Your family has a farm, you said?”

  “Yeah, a tree farm. Christmas trees are a big crop for us.”

  Fenella straightened in her seat. “A tree farm.”

  “Right. Most people don’t think of trees needing to be farmed, but my family’s been taking care of trees for generations. Trees are in our blood, my dad says.” He laughed. “You know, I was originally going to go to forestry school, like my sisters did. I have two older sisters. I’m still not sure how I ended up choosing vet school instead. Or how I ended up on the East Coast.” He stole a look at her. “It just seemed right.”

  Chapter 15

  Fenella felt the tiny hairs on the back of her neck rise. She had to control the impulse to lean over and sniff

  deeply at Walker’s neck. Trees were in his blood? Even though he was human? She inhaled cautiously instead, trying to discern that subtle greenish scent she knew so well.

  But Walker smelled of nothing but soap, and dog hair, and himself; the personal, chemical mixture of salt and sweat on his skin. He had been speaking metaphorically, not literally.

  Of course.

  She said, almost accusingly, “You decided to take care of animals, not trees.”

  “Well, I like animals a lot.” Walker spoke thoughtfully. “I miss living in the forest, and nearer to wilder places. But I also like it out here. It’s complicated, I guess. I made the choice I needed to make for myself, when I left home for college. But I’m only twenty-three. I think life ought to take twists and turns, don’t you? And you ought to try different things. And be open to, you know, whatever happens.”

  Fenella watched his profile and heard the confidence in his voice. So human, she thought wistfully. Thinking that an
y day, life would grab you and catch you up into an exhilarating dance.

  But the truth was that, while you might get grabbed and caught, it wouldn’t be a good thing. You wouldn’t know what had trapped you, or how, until it was too late and your pathetic life was no longer your own. Until all you wanted was for it to be over.

  Twenty-three, he said he was. He might as well be an infant, with his hopes and dreams, and what he thought was a complicated life story. Complicated! If ever she told him her story, which of course she never would, then he would understand the meaning of complicated.

  Walker squinted at a road sign. “This exit, I think.” He steered the truck off the highway. “Yeah, this is it.” Soon they were traveling at a more moderate speed down a narrow road, with the trees crowded even more thickly alongside.

  Fenella put down the truck’s window. Oak, birch, aspen, maple, pine. Ordinary trees only, not fey, but she was still glad to see them. This wasn’t unbroken forest, of course; there were mailboxes along the road, and houses that she could glimpse through the screen of trees. Still, it was a pleasant, peaceful road, quite different from the crowded, thickly populated street on which her family lived. The dwellings here were huge, she noted.

  “Who lives here?”

  “Rich people. The kind that have horses. I’ve been doing some training in equine medicine. I helped at a birth last week. It was really, really cool.”

  He kept on talking as they turned onto a narrower road, still paved. Another little distance, and another turn, and then a sign loomed before them.

  Rutherford Office Park. Pre-construction Prices Available.

  They were on a vast paved space that had been cut cruelly out of the trees. A few large, boxlike, unfinished buildings dominated two sides of the clearing, with a scattering of cars and trucks parked close to them. The large central portion of the pavement was empty, however, save for a painted white grid of lines that divided it into parking spaces.

  “We can drive round and round here,” Walker said with satisfaction. He stopped the truck right in the center and parked it. “Ready to take the wheel, Fenella-who-was-bornto-drive?”

  Fenella unbuckled her seat belt, opened the passenger door, and was on the ground in an instant. Thirty more seconds and she was behind the wheel on the driver’s side, with Walker in her old place as passenger. She hardly listened as he said things about how driving a manual differed from an automatic, and described the various engine noises she was to listen to for clues as to when to shift gears. The truck’s engine thrummed to life, and she felt the vibrations within her body. Her feet placed themselves on the gas pedal and the clutch, and her hand positioned itself on the gearshift.

  “Transition from neutral to first as you give it gas. All right, good. Up to second as you pick up speed, you never stay long in first, excellent, you’re doing great. That noise again—hear it?—tells you the engine’s uncomfortable at this speed and so it’s time to shift up to third. Good. Practice going in circles, staying in the lower gears and transitioning down to a stop when I tell you. Okay, try the brake, control the car, good, and now shift up again. Listen to the engine—Fenella!”

  The gears screamed. The truck rocked to an abrupt, nasty halt as the engine stalled.

  “S or r y.”

  “Yeah, no problem. Everybody does something like that when they’re learning. Usually several times at least. I’m actually impressed. But Fenella? This is a parking lot, not a highway. You’re overconfident with the gas. Don’t go fast here. Move in a circle, and practice stopping and starting. That’s all. Nice and smooth. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re doing good. Start the engine again.”

  She did. She listened to Walker’s voice as he guided her, until she began to anticipate what he was going to say. She went around the parking lot in the sedate circle that Walker had asked for, starting and stopping neatly one time per revolution, shifting up and down, and down and up, and keeping the speed reasonable as he had said she should. The engine began to purr for her, more warmly than Ryland ever did. Spontaneously, Fenella took the truck in a figure eight. Walker chuckled.

  Then everything clicked together as she had known it would. Fenella could hear and feel what the engine needed her to do, so that it could cooperate with her wishes. They were akin, she and the truck; they were one.

  It was amazing!

  She did another figure eight, and then, neatly, parked the car and turned off the engine. She turned to face Walker. Her cheeks were flushed.

  “Wow, you were right. You are a natural.” Walker hesitated and then grinned. “You know what? Let’s leave this parking lot. You drive us home. You can do it.”

  Fenella smiled demurely.

  Afterward she hugged to herself the memory of how it had felt to drive the truck down Route 2. The whistle of the mild October wind through the open windows. The smile curving on her mouth, and the shouted roar of Walker’s approval. The truck’s instantaneous responses to the command of her foot on the accelerator, her hand on the gearshift, and her other hand on the wheel. For a precious length of time, Fenella felt as if she might take wing.

  This was a detour on her journey to death; only a small detour. What was the word again? A vacation. But still, it had happened.

  In front of the house, she turned off the truck and jumped lightly down. She was at the passenger door before Walker had done more than swing his legs out. A big grin split his face. She went up close to him as he hit the ground. She touched his cheek gently with one hand. Then—to her own surprise—she reached farther up, to the back of his head. She said, “Thank you, Walker Dobrez. Thank you for letting me drive.” The next second, she pulled his head down and kissed him softly, her closed lips gentle on his surprised ones.

  The moment she realized what she was doing, she jumped back, her face flaming.

  Walker’s face was alive with wonder. His hand touched her cheek, a mirror to the way she had just touched his.

  “No,” she said hurriedly. She caught his hand and gently pushed it away. “I wanted to kiss you, I guess, but it can only happen once. You’re not for me. I’m not for you.”

  Walker’s expression froze. With the truck immediately behind him, he couldn’t move away from her. But it felt as if he had.

  Fenella backed farther off. “I—I’m sorry, I have another favor to ask. Could you take the dog away? Please? It’s only—it’s not the right time for him to come home.”

  After a second, stiffly, Walker nodded.

  “Thank you,” Fenella muttered. She turned away from Walker. She raced into the house, her mind a churning mess of confusion and dismay and her body still filled with an irrepressible, irrational happiness.

  Chapter 16

  On the day that she destroyed her family’s safety, Fenella awoke feeling strong and alert. It was October tenth, well into autumn by the calendar, but the morning sky outside the window promised summery, cloudless weather.

  Fenella’s mind was cloudless too. She was in total control of the first task and nobody was going to be hurt.

  She got out of bed. In the next second, the cat was crouched by her feet, his almond-shaped eyes glittering. She nodded at him. They had gone over Fenella’s plans meticulously the night before. Ryland had made only one suggestion, and had even said an approving word about her timetable and logic.

  She followed the cat’s gaze to the bedside clock. “Good morning,” she said aloud, impatient.

  Miranda answered from the next bed; more grunt than words.

  “We need to get up, Miranda,” Fenella said. “The race is this morning, you know.”

  “Ummmph.”

  Fenella threw a pillow at Miranda and darted down the hall to the bathroom. When Fenella returned, wrapped in a towel, Miranda was sitting on the edge of her bed, feet dangling.

  “I’m excited about the race,” Fenella said chattily. She really was. The Boston Cream Pie 5K would get everybody in the family—actually, probably the en
tire neighborhood— out of her way and over to Main Street. “It will be fun to see Lucy and Zach run.” She felt a pang because, of course, she was not really going to see them run.

  “Then we get a pie,” she added, although she doubted that this would actually happen either.

  “We’ll get at least five pies,” Miranda corrected wearily. “Some of the racers turn them down. Calories.”

  “What are calories? Oh, wait. I remember they were in The Way Things Work.”

  “Is the bathroom free?” asked Miranda.

  “Yes. Everybody else is already up. You need to hurry so you can have breakfast before we leave.”

  “I’m not hungry.” Miranda was never hungry. She shuffled out of the room, shoulders bowed.

  She might try to stay home today, warned Ryland. She won’t want to be out there in a crowd, with everybody making noise.

  “She has to go,” said Fenella, suddenly tense. “I’ll make her go.”

  Ryland sniffed.

  Fenella turned to get dressed.

  The Boston Cream Pie 5K race was a fund-raiser for the local high school track team, open to anybody of any age who lived in a three-town radius. Four hundred pies had been ordered for the finishers, and Lucy, her friend Sarah Hebert, and Fenella had made thirty-six of them yesterday.

  It had surprised Fenella, how much fun it had been to hang out with Lucy and Sarah and bake.

  Sarah and Fenella did the actual mixing and baking, while Lucy worked on assembly. This involved cutting each circular yellow sponge cake in half horizontally, plopping on a thick layer of custard, and putting the layers back together so they could be iced. Lucy was not good at it; her top layers had a tendency to go on crooked. “Taste, not beauty,” Lucy would say before turning haphazardly to the next cake. Behind her back, Fenella edged many a top layer into a better position. Once, while she was doing this, she caught Sarah’s eye, and Sarah winked. Shyly, Fenella had winked back.

  How happy it would have made Minnie to know that sometime in the future Fenella would be out in the world, with family and friends, making pies. Thinking of this, Fenella paused in the act of tying on her sneakers. Of course, Minnie would have been horrified if she knew what Fenella was doing today.