Rita smiled thinly when she saw her husband coming up the driveway. She hadn’t got much chance to see her mother, but the visit would do her good anyway.
He didn’t get out of the car, just sat there idling at the end of the path through the little tree-lined front garden of the Shady Rest retirement home. She would go to him. That was how he wanted it. She looked over her shoulder at the nurse who showed her out, now retreating to attend to some complaint from another resident.
The orange light of the streetlamp pooled a dark shadow under the car, as though it were a black hole, a gateway through which no light returned.
“Hi, honey,” said her husband as she drew nearer, her heels clacking on the concrete paving. He was as unreadable as ever, and she suddenly wanted to turn and run in the other direction, hide herself away among the wheelchairs and walkers and never see daylight again.
She opened the passenger side door and sat down. “Sorry you had to drive out here to fetch me. Sue was supposed to, but her boy had some trouble at school.”
Hugh nodded. “She drop you off?” he asked. When Rita shook her head, he put the car into gear and moved off. “I take it you didn’t walk out here. Not in those.”
“Oh, no,” said Rita. “That was… Mia.”
“Mia,” said Hugh, rolling the name around. “Do I know her?”
“You might have met her at a party once. We were at college together. She did literature. She’s in town.”
“Ah,” Hugh nodded. He shifted up a gear and they drove in silence for a while.
“Your old friend from college was in town… and you made her drive you out to the shithole nursing home,” he said then.
“She offered to take me. After we had lunch together.”
Hugh said “Ah,” again. Rita’s eye crept over to the speedometer needle, which was twitching. The only hint of what her husband was thinking. Like her own personal polygraph. Jumping up, down, up, down. Up.
Up.
He shifted gear again. Two more to go til topping out.
“I saw that man driving back along this road. The man from that bar,” said Hugh.
“What bar?” Rita said. She tried not to be obvious about checking her seatbelt was secure.
“You know which bar,” Hugh said. His voice was dropping lower and lower until it was almost a whisper. “The bar you skulk off to when you think I won’t hear about it. The bar you bring those men back from when you think I don’t know. But I know.” The needle was twitching on 60. 70. 80.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about-”
“I’m the law out here,” said Hugh barely above a breath. “That means I get to hearing about things. That means when my own goddamn burnt-out bitch of a wife goes out and gets drunk and sneaks off with guys, I get to hear about that. It reflects on me, you know.” His voice was rising. “Did you ever think about how YOUR actions affect ME? MY ability to do my DUTY?” Most people who saw him like this didn’t live to regret it.
The needle hit one hundred. “I’m sorry! Slow down!” said Rita, her black eyeliner streaking as the terror broke her down at last. “Slow down, please!”
“Oh,” said Hugh, suddenly calm again. “Are we doing what you say now? Are you in charge of this car? Or am I?”
He looked over, a sharklike smile on his lips, and right into her eyes.
“Let’s find out, you son of a bitch,” said Rita, and pulled the handbrake.

Heather had called her a little after the Gambler and Rita had left to go up to the nursing home, and asked her to go up and check on them. She had been so nervous, Sam had heard her pacing up and down the bar like she always used to do when she had an essay due. Sam hadn’t asked her what exactly she was worried about, she could tell from her tone she was too anxious to even answer that question.
“At the next exit, turn right,” said her phone. Sam didn’t have any family in the Shady Rest, so she was relying on the magic of satellite navigation to get her there. She glanced at the phone and lifted her foot off the gas to avoid going over the limit.
Just then her phone started to buzz. It was Heather. She could safely ignore that. It would just be “where are they? Are they with you?” over and over.
While she was looking at her phone, she almost missed the woman staggering out onto the road in front of her, waving her arms. She was limping on high-heels, and Sam could see that one of them was snapped off which was making it even harder.
She slammed the brakes and pulled to a stop a handful of feet in front of the woman. She had on a black dress that was in ribbons, but she didn’t seem too badly hurt all things considered.
When she saw the crash, Sam modified her opinion from “not too bad” to “goddamn miracle”. It was burning, and she could see the shadow of the driver still inside. He wasn’t moving.
“Leave him! Leave him!” said the woman. She grabbed hold of Sam’s black band t-shirt, stretching out the logo, and tried to pull her back to the car. Sam let herself be pulled away.
There wasn’t anything left she could do anyway.

When she learned that the woman was Rita, that the wreckage in the treeline was her husband’s police cruiser, she nearly burst out laughing. But that would have been inappropriate. Still, Rita noticed a spark of amusement cross her face.
“Sorry,” said Sam when Rita quizzed her. “I was sent to check on you. Heather asked me to drive out here. Good thing she did.”
Was Hugh dead? More importantly, what were his cops going to do to her if they found out what she had done? Her head was spinning, not just from the probable concussion but also the maze of possibilities in front of her.
“What happened back there?” said Sam offhand as they crossed a railway line. Rita told her, the words sticking in her throat when it came time to admit her part in the crash.
“Shh shh shh. You don’t have to tell me anything,” said Sam, reaching out and taking Rita’s shaking hand in hers. “Whatever happened, it’s in the past.”
“He never did anything like this before,” said Rita. “He never raised his voice.” She looked up at the darkening sky. Her daughter would be wondering where she was. Where they both were. The poker game was still rolling when the gambler got back and came in through the saloon doors. Heather was serving drinks to a bar that was some bit livelier than she was used to; something about the day had put a spring into the step of the people. Maybe it was the legend, which was growing in the telling, of the handsome stranger who had stared down Chief Hugh Blake and laughed in his face. Certainly nobody who had arrived since the gambler had left recognised him from the story that was rotating from person to person like a game of telephone with no end.
He sat down at the bar. “Another of those nice brothers’ beers,” he said, and Heather began pouring.
“You know, they aren’t nice,” she said.
“What?”
“I never said they were nice. You asked, but I didn’t get a chance to answer.”
“Oh,” said the gambler. “Sorry.”
Heather waved it away. She was used to being ignored, after all. “I sent one of my girlfriends after Rita. Just in case. I don’t think she should be by herself when Blake finds her.”
The gambler nodded. Smart thinking. He tried not to wonder which kind of girlfriend Heather was talking about – the friend kind or the other kind.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” said Heather with a clairvoyant wink.
Just then the door clattered behind him and two silhouettes appeared in the orange pool of streetlight from outside.
“Come in!” said Heather. “Where’s…?”
The woman who came in first was young, with silver piercings studding her nose and ears. Her hair was chopped a little longer than pixie-cut. Leaning the other kind, thought the gambler.
“Hugh’s dead,” said Rita, and he noticed for the first time the state she was in. She coughed, and looked at him weakly.
“Alright, who’s safe to drive? Anybody?” said Heather. She looked at the gambler.
“Can I? Sure. Safe? No,” he said. Nobody else was taking the bait.
“Goddammit. We’ll need to call an ambulance. How’s your insurance?” asked Heather. Rita shrugged. One eye was half-shut.
“Oh, dear,” said a voice. It was low and cool and speaking slowly, and it came from the doorway. “Nobody sober in the whole establishment?”
A flash of blued steel was the first thing into the room. The Colt was clutched in the bony hand of the half-alive thing that had been Chief Hugh Blake.