The road buckles with heat all the way to the distant hills. She longs for their cool mountain home, but there is something she must do before then, something essential, and dangerous. Damn the girl for placing her in this situation. Despite her anger, there was still gnawing worry, pulling at her flesh like crows at roadkill. She takes a deep gulp of tepid water, the plastic crackling as she drains what is left. There is no one on the road - she supposes that suits him, the desolation, the loneliness, the emptiness. No witnesses, she guesses. The highway would have been riskier. 

![Adobe_Express_20221129_1632010_1.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/riverflows/242hUMMPZ3DGdfgce6STRRRezbY1HAz9qgUNXCCRXLGR83L3EwouTLJaHitV4zHy38REh.png)

In the rear view mirror, she checks her **appearance**, ties her hair into a casual bun, tugs out ribbons of hair so it falls softly around her face. There's the crows again. Feet this time, around her eyes. She smiles, and her skin disagrees with the cheerfulness of the expression. At a distance, she's pretty, but this close to a reflective surface, her age shows. No matter. Distance will work. She turns the waist of her skirt over in folds so the fabric shifts from her knees to mid thigh. Thank goodness for cowboy boots. They give her what she believes, hopes, is a youthful confidence. 



She'd been trailing his car since midday, since she first saw a girl slip into the passenger seat. It *did* look like her, almost like when she had left, throwing her the finger. Teenagers. She was the same. 

She'd long suspected a boyfriend. It fitted, as well as her miniskirts, too clingy and too short for a girl her age, as she'd reprimand. Hand over hand, she spun the hot steering wheel so the car moved slowly after them, like she had done before, following the child, ready to drag her home where she belonged. The couple disappeared for a half hour maybe, out of view, and then she sees him pull into the service station, alone. What else was she meant to do? Leave her be? Give the freedom she had stomped and shouted for? She had been gone long enough. If he's done something with her, she'll figure it out, and he'll pay for it. 

At the bowser he winks. She wants to vomit. They say Bundy never looked the type, and that the worst never do. It was so with him as it was with so many of them - ordinary, sneakered, peak capped, square jawed. Cute, even. She hears her daughter begging to see a boy and her refusing. She was too young to know what men were really like. She, however, knows the play. She avoids eye contact as he strides past to pay, exiting with a pack of Walkers crisps and his keys dangling from his little finger. She has been listening, intently, underneath the waves of tinny Brittany over the forecourt. She thinks she hears a muffled sob, confirming. But he is fast now, slipping back over the black vinyl seats and away again. 

Eventually they are on the back roads, and she passes, fast, singing, thumping the steering wheel, carefree, nonchalant. She wills herself into a character, a woman going somewhere, uninterested in men in baseball caps on lonely highways. His car disappears in the rearview and she brakes, fast, lets a tyre down, flips the hood. Now she waits. She is an old hand at this. There are crows on the fences, watching intently. They're used to death, and she doesn't mind them as witnesses. He wouldn't be the first asshole she'd dealt with and wouldn't be the last. 

![Adobe_Express_20221129_1625590_1.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/riverflows/242NhAQMXkcQYyxZ8nZvPzCLBHxmdCVp2qZaMd3S4MgHdAcH2Toyz4JcKhpTUzTgMCt8S.png)

He shouldn't have winked.

When his car reappears in the rearview, she bites top and bottom lips, flushing them ruby in place of lipstick. That will have to do. His car slows, seeing the bait she wants him to. She looks young, and pretty, and he cannot truly see her at this distance - not mother, not lived experience, not age. Just a woman on a lonely highway with a broken down car and cowboy boots. Legs and skirt. He's greedy, she thinks. Everyone's fucking greedy these days. 

He's half way to the car when she reaches for the bow. 

'Lady, I don't know what you think - '. But the arrow doesn't miss - it rarely does. He conveniently rolls off the verge and down an embankment as he falls. The crows scatter, startled as he is. They'll settle down upon him, she knows, predictable in their highway habits. 

![Adobe_Express_20221129_1645360_1.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/riverflows/2423uhrkNfjbFib86j999DHixWZvMBAsL58TkrnuZuBajz1CQzHx6xamWjUYixpiR5nvG.png)

She pops his boot. The girl blinks in the light, making noises under the duct tape, squirming. At last, she's found her. 

She blinks, rubs the sweat from her eyes where the salt stings. The crows scream.

There's no one there.

Again.

Three years now, looking. 

She sighs, grabs the keys to move his car out of sight. God, she's going to be mad when her daughter finally comes home. She's long past due, and she's tired of looking for her.

*Images created on Adobe Express using Adobe stock images.*


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# `With Love,` 


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