Elena put her overnight bag on the back seat, then started the car and turned the heater on. Miles got into the passenger seat carrying his bag. The flowers were between his feet. He moved them gently to the back.
“Don't make this harder by being nice to my flowers,” she said.
He put on his seat belt. “I'll insult them later.”
She reversed past the gray hatchback and took the track uphill. Its potholes were familiar. She avoided the one beside the birch, the dip near the gate where rainwater collected, the root that raised the gravel like a buried wrist. She had driven this road for years, with Daniel and without him. She knew where it ended.
Miles held the grab handle. His knuckles were pale.
“Have you tried this?”
“Yesterday.”
“And?”
“Keep driving.”
The track curved left. It should have climbed toward the cattle grid and the narrow lane beyond. Elena watched for the leaning fencepost that marked the turn. It appeared on her right, just where it belonged. She passed it and saw water through the trees.
There should not have been water there.
She drove farther. The gravel leveled. A porch came into view, and beside it a gray hatchback with a bakery bag on its dashboard.
Elena stopped so abruptly that Miles's bag hit the footwell.
“No.”
She turned in front of the house and tried again. This time she watched the distance on the dashboard. A quarter of a mile to the fencepost. Then a little more. She took the right fork where no right fork had existed on the way down. The road narrowed until branches scraped the roof. Miles told her to stop; she accelerated, and the branches cleared.
The house stood ahead of them. Kitchen light lay across the path. Through the open door she could see the meal on the table.
She hit the steering wheel with the heel of her hand. The horn sounded, ridiculous and loud in the little bay.
“It did this to you?”
Miles nodded.
“Then why did you let me—”
“Because I wanted it to be different with you in the car.”
Her phone rang. Elena seized it. Jo had reached the caretaker. He was at the upper gate, where he could see the track going down. There was no car coming up. Could Elena drive toward him slowly? He would come down on foot.
Elena put the call on speaker. She told Jo to keep talking. Outside the windscreen the tree shadows lengthened. Miles had gone very still.
They climbed again. Jo relayed the caretaker's progress, sounding increasingly annoyed with the poor signal. He had passed the cattle grid. He was at the fencepost. Elena saw that same post beside her window.
“We're there,” she said. “Tell him we're there.”
“He can't see you.”
The post passed behind them. The car's floor was suddenly wet beneath Elena's shoe. She lifted her foot and pressed the brake with her heel. Water ran over the pedals.
Jo was asking whether they had stopped. Elena looked down. The water was rising from the seam beside the handbrake, bubbling clear and cold. It covered the rubber mat, then the toes of Miles's shoes. He unbuckled his belt.
“Out,” he said.
The engine faltered. Elena turned it off and pushed her door. It opened against a weight that had not been there a second earlier. Water poured over the sill. She got out with the phone still in her hand and her handbag caught on the belt lever. She yanked it free.
They stood on dry gravel beside a flooded car.
Jo's voice came faintly from the phone. “Elena? Is there an accident?”
Elena raised it. “Send help. There's water in the car. I don't know how.”
“Are you outside?”
“Yes.”
“Stay there. I'm calling.”
The call ended. Elena looked uphill. Beyond a stand of trees the track should have joined the lane. A man might already be walking down it. She could wait for him. She could take Miles and run toward him. She chose running.
Miles came after her, his bag bumping his leg. Her wet shoes slipped on loose gravel. She threw one off and then the other. Cold stones bit her feet, but she kept moving. At the fencepost she turned uphill deliberately, holding out her hand to touch the wood as she passed. It was solid. A splinter caught beneath her fingernail.
The ground sloped down.
She saw the house through the trees. Her car stood beside Miles's, its open doors spilling water that vanished on the gravel.
Elena stopped. Miles collided with her shoulder and caught himself against a trunk. Both of them were breathing hard.
From far away a man called, “Hello?”
She shouted until her throat hurt. The man called again, farther off this time. She could hear him walking. She could not find the sound on the track in front of her. Miles took her elbow and turned her gently toward the house.
“Don't,” she said.
“I can't hear him now.”
“He could come back.”
“Yes.” He stood with her and listened.
After a while her phone buzzed. Jo had called emergency services. The caretaker had reached the house and found it empty. He could see two cars outside, both locked. He would wait. Was Elena sure she had not taken a wrong path?
Elena looked at her open car, then at the kitchen door. Inside it a figure passed the window, indistinct in the warm light. She did not tell Jo about the figure. She said she was sure.
“I'll keep trying to reach you,” Jo said.
Elena thanked her because the woman was afraid and doing what she could. When the call ended, Elena lowered the phone to her side.
Miles had gone back for her shoes. He held them by their straps. She looked at his wet trousers, his scraped fingers, the bag he had packed to leave.
“You're not just here to tell me,” she said.
His eyes met hers for a moment. Then he looked toward the lake. “I can't get away either.”
The upper gate belonged to someone else's evening. There was a caretaker there, a road, people answering phones. Elena could almost feel the ordinary world just beyond her reach, continuing to do sensible things.
She took her shoes from Miles and went down to the dock.