After three hours on I-5 North, Howard gave up on the radio. The announcer’s voice was pockmarked with static, and the songs were worn thin and mournful from overuse. He switched it off in the middle of an old rock song—Cat Stevens—and enjoyed the sudden silence. The road muttered warmly under the tires. The setting sun sent splinters of gold light across the windshield. Shifting in his seat, Howard watched the hand on the speedometer tremble towards eighty. If he kept it up, he could make it home to Lauren before ten. Hopefully she’d have left his dinner in the microwave, ready for him to heat up, to eat quietly in the sleepy glow of the television, careful not to disturb the cats.

Lauren, he guessed, would be fast asleep, exhausted from researching another personal injury case. Howard frowned, rubbing the film of sweat that was collecting on his brow. No, maybe she would be awake, sitting in bed with her documents spread over the comforter. He saw her now: rumpled brown hair, black-framed glasses, mouth screwed tight in concentration. Howard slid his left hand off the steering wheel. She would look up as he came in, dole out a smile, ask about the business trip, not listen to the answer. Checking the rearview mirror, Howard allowed himself a resigned smile. He and Lauren always put on a good show. Wow, twenty-five years? People said when they saw them at parties. You two are a modern phenomenon. And then Howard and Lauren would smile at each other, tighten their grips on each other’s waists, swaying in a sea of champagne glasses and diamonds. Yup, they would say. Twenty-five years.

A honk from behind made Howard glance up at the rearview mirror. It was a green Range Rover. The other driver made an impatient gesture and craned his neck, as if trying to pass him.

“Be my guest,” Howard scoffed, tapping the brakes. “Enjoy your ticket.” He gave the Range Rover a two-fingered salute as it sped past. Howard watched the car dissolve into the darkening horizon.

It wasn’t until it had completely disappeared from view, however, that Howard saw the girl. At first, she was just a speck on the right hand side, a silhouette against the soft hills and yellow brush. As Howard approached, slowing, he made out the backpack she had slung from one shoulder, the branch she used as a walking stick. He saw her short brown hair. Her legs, deer-like, delicate, plodded forward under the frayed ends of her jean shorts. The suggestion of a waist rocked side to side under the fabric of her gray sweater. Hearing his car, she turned and broke into a backward jog, holding out a thumb and a grim smile.

Howard felt an inexplicable knot in his stomach, and a swift pulse built in his ears. It was ridiculous really, this hitchhiking business. It was something he and his college friends had done back when it was safe, back when they smoked, back when they kept tattered copies of Whitman in their pockets. But he found his foot faltering on the gas pedal despite himself. He couldn’t escape now; the girl’s face had already softened in relief, and her hand was reaching out for the door handle. Howard pulled the car into a soft margin of dirt by the side of the road and wondered at himself.

The girl knocked at the window. “It’s locked,” she said, and her voice was low and musical.

“Oh.” Howard scrambled to find the button. “Sorry.”

She pulled the door open, letting in a rush of highway sounds and cooling air. The door slammed shut again, and the girl arranged herself in the seat next to him with her backpack in her lap. She smelled faintly of sweat and French fries.

He tried to remain calm. “So,” he said, clearing his throat, “where to?”

“Just north,” she said. She faced straight ahead, and Howard saw that she had small, pursed lips and two tired eyes and a piercing on her left eyebrow. “As far north as you’re going.”

“Alright,” said Howard. He put on the blinker and peered at the road. He hated himself sometimes, the small dangers he put himself in—tipping too much to chatty waitresses, holding doors open for the sound of approaching heels. The silence that had soothed him a few moments ago now seemed horrifying.

After he had merged back into the scant traffic, she cleared her throat.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’m exhausted. I’ve been walking since this morning. It’s Lydia, by the way.”

“Howard,” said Howard. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Pleased to meet you,” she echoed, and looked at him for the first time. He grew keenly aware of the roundness of his belly under his blue button-up, his unshaven face. Returning her gaze, Howard registered that Lydia was vaguely attractive, but her peaked face was too knowing, her eyes too quick to follow his, for her to be pretty. Howard realized that he was terrified of her, and when Lydia fiddled with the strap of her backpack he imagined her pulling out a gun.

Please, he would beg, his heart stiffening in his chest, I have a wife and daughter. My daughter Karen, she looks just like you, Lydia. She looks just like you. Which would be a lie, of course. Lydia looked nothing like his daughter. Karen had inherited her mother’s round face and her father’s toothsome grin.

“So what’s up north?” Howard asked to distract himself. He struggled with the urge to turn the radio back on.

Lydia didn’t answer right away. She was gazing out the window, haloed by the glow of the sunset. Howard, in his stolen glances at her, appreciated the three freckles on her white neck. “I have some friends in Portland,” Lydia said, scratching the skin around her piercing. Her answer sounded practiced.

“Portland,” Howard repeated dumbly. “You got a ways to go.”

In the glass, the ghost of her face looked woefully back at him. “I know,” she said. “But I’m a hell of a lot closer than when I started. That was in Arizona, where my folks are.”

“Do they know where you are?” And then, “I don’t mean to pry.”

But she simply said, “No, they don’t.” She unzipped the front pocket of her backpack and withdrew an unwrapped granola bar, which she took her time eating. The dull crack of her teeth biting into the bar was the only sound for a while. Then, as Howard relaxed, he heard again the tinkle of the keys hanging from the ignition, the settling of legs in the leather seats, the mysterious clicks of his empty CD changer. The sounds, so intimate, so small, put Howard at ease.

“You pick up a lot of us, or what?” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“You know—hitchers.” Lydia drew the hood of her sweater on over her head.

“No, actually, you’re the first.” Howard cleared his throat and continued. “You know, hitchhiking isn’t really the safest route to Portland. Sorry. I have to say it. I’m a parent—I know what it’s like to be in constant fear for your daughter.”

Lydia laughed a sad, lilting laugh that made him feel like a child and that stung towards the end. “It’s the only way to travel with twenty dollars in your pocket,” she said with a sly smile. “And it’s not so bad, anyway. Sometimes you meet really good people. I mean, sure, there are creeps, but mostly the people who give you rides are good people.” She rolled down the window and threw something out into the hissing slipstream.  “Take Al, for example.” She paused, as if surprised at herself for mentioning him. “Al was good people.”

She seemed to remember herself and sighed, propping her feet up onto the dashboard. She tugged at the baby hairs growing behind her ears. Howard tried to think of something to say, something to let her know that he was good people, too; something to make the miles she still had to go collapse together. But he only switched on his headlights and fell into a strangled silence. The occasional marbled moth flickered into the fanned light as they drove on.

Just as the quiet threatened to smother them, she rasped, “Is this your family?” Lydia fiddled with a photograph clipped to the visor above her head. Howard had forgotten all about it. It was a picture taken by a stranger at the Grand Canyon, where he and Lauren had gone for vacation in 1994. They were standing at the edge of a precipice with windswept hair and smiles sloppy with happiness. Karen, just five years old at the time, had taken each of her parents’ hands in her own and was caught mid-swing between them. Her little knees were curled upwards off the ground and her eyes were closed, as if she were a champion gymnast in the last screw of concentration before landing a backwards somersault. Looking at it, Howard remembered the hot paw of his daughter’s hand in his; he remembered the love that had welled in him when he looked over at Lauren and saw her smile, the smile that lingered long after the camera shutter had clicked.

“Yeah,” said Howard. “That’s my wife Lauren and my daughter Karen.” He kneaded the steering wheel with damp palms. “Karen’s around your age, actually.”

“That’s your wife?” Lydia sat up in her seat to peer closer at the picture.

“Uh-huh.”

“Wow, she’s beautiful.”

Something in the girl’s voice made Howard take his eyes off the road and look at her. It had been so tender, so truthfully uttered. Lydia trailed a finger across the surface of the photograph, and her mouth opened with something like longing.

Suddenly uncomfortable, Howard asked, “So who’s Al?”

“Hmm?” said Lydia dreamily, still studying the photograph.

“Al,” Howard said. “You mentioned him earlier.”

“Oh, right,” said Lydia, sinking back and folding her ankles over each other on the dashboard. Only the tip of her nose was visible from under the hood of her sweater. “Him. He was just someone back in Arizona who gave me a ride. Big dude with a ponytail. I had only gone the first few hundred miles or so and I was terrified. He asked me where I was coming from, so I tell him I’m from this little place outside of Phoenix, and he goes, I know some people there, and we started talking. Turns out he knew my mom. It’s crazy, but they used to work together in a coffee shop when they were a lot younger.

“For a second I thought for sure he would rat me out to my parents, you know, or some other bullshit that adults do—sorry—but then he just sighed and said, ‘I oughta stop you, but I got a feeling that you’re getting where you need to go.’ And he didn’t say anything else about it. He told me a bunch of crazy stories about my mom.” Lydia trailed off, one hand gently wringing the other. Then she yawned and lifted herself up on her elbows to watch the fleeing lights out the window.

Howard kept track of her girlish gestures, and something thawed inside him the way it used to when he woke up early in the mornings and found Lauren downstairs, absently sipping tea with the Orange County Register open in her lap.

They had been in school together, he and Lauren. She had been part of student government. Her hair, a short bob, had framed her high pink cheeks as she talked about the blood drive or the football game. He had been quiet and awkwardly proportioned, lurching across campus behind a stack of books for British Literature. Howard remembered the thick swell of embarrassment that had risen in his face when Lauren had asked him to prom. “Me?” he croaked. The other students had been trickling out of the room.

“Sure,” she answered. “I mean, our parents know each other already. My dad’s not too happy with the idea of me going with a boy at all.” She had giggled nervously, and that was it—Howard had fallen in love with that sound. He now felt like he hadn’t heard Lauren laugh in years, not in the way she used to, with her head ducking into his chest.

Howard was grateful to Lydia when she piped up again. “So yeah,” she said, jiggling her ankles on the dashboard, “I don’t think bumming rides is all that dangerous. Money is tight, though.” She sucked the inside of her cheek. “Money is real tight.”

Howard heard the dropping notes in her voice and fought to keep the wheel steady. And she must have seen the panicked flutter of his eyelids, or heard the involuntary catch in his breath, because the next thing she said was, “It costs fifty dollars. Just in case you were wondering.”

“What does?” Howard’s tongue felt heavy, leaden, and when it grazed the roof of his arid mouth it stuck a little.

“Fifty bucks,” Lydia repeated. “Your wife doesn’t have to know.”

Howard lofted his eyes on the red taillights of the car in front of him. At the edge of his vision, he saw Lydia run a nervous hand around her neck.

“I’m clean,” she offered. “No strings attached. I just need the money.” And suddenly her breath was small and warm, like a bird’s, shuddering against his ear. She wrapped a hand around his shoulder. As her fingers began to trail downwards, Howard shook his head weakly, and he said, “No.”

But he guided the car to the off-ramp with the girl’s hand still draped over him. Howard’s mind ticked forward with the blinking of his right taillight. He couldn’t keep his thoughts from swinging towards Lauren: how she had stood on the front steps as he hustled past her with his suitcase, how he had seen her at the door as he backed down the driveway, and how, at the last moment, her vacant stare had crumpled into something like grief. As if she had foreseen this somehow, and accepted.

He found the rest stop and the parking space in the farthest corner of the lot. The car’s engine stilled itself under a tree whose wizened branches twisted, violent, into the streetlamp’s dusky bloom. Head swimming, Howard wrenched the keys out of the ignition and cradled them in his hands.

“I don’t think I can do this.”

Lydia removed the keys from Howard’s hand and let them fall under the seat. He grazed her cheek with a mournful hand, and, as she pulled him toward her, dimmed his reeling thoughts.

Howard’s body followed her body. Underneath her sweater, Lydia wore a black camisole that she peeled from her torso, pulling it over her head in one graceful swing of the arms, and then there she was, a lithe young thing, hair matted on one side, her lips gentle on his. Lydia’s small hands unbuttoned his pants. Howard moaned into her neck and shuddered as she wrapped her legs around him. Writhing underneath him, Lydia reached down and fished a condom out of her shorts, which lay rumpled in the gap between her seat and the console. She pressed it into his hand. Howard glanced warily at the window and saw the blurred reflections of their bodies lifting in the fogged glass. He paused.

“What?” said Lydia softly, stiffening in his arms.

He looked at her; he couldn’t look at her. She was so young and hopeful. She was giving him her body for fifty dollars, and nobody would ever know.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and suddenly he was crying. Howard hung his head between his shoulders. He caught sight of his knees, and they looked grotesque, pink and withered and sprouting coarse hair. His arms shook as they braced him against the seat. “I’m sorry. This was a mistake.” Blindly, he began to pull his pants up from around his knees, condom discarded out the window.

“It’s okay. It’s okay, Howard—”

“Oh, God, don’t say my name,” he choked out, frantically buckling his belt. “Don’t say anything.”

“Okay,” Lydia said. Her long arm felt around for her clothes, which she pulled on. Once dressed, she sat waiting for Howard to collect himself.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, hearing nothing but the old wet rasp of his lungs. He shied away from Lydia, bunching his shoulders together towards the left car door. Lydia rolled the window halfway open. From outside, the soothing hum of traffic stole into the car. She laid a tentative hand on Howard’s shuddering back. At her touch, he inhaled sharply, wiped the back of his hand over his eyes, and straightened up.

“This is horrible,” continued Lydia, shaking her head back and forth. “I’m not a home wrecker, you know. I’m just trying to get by. I’m not some—some—”

Howard felt around for his keys and broke in, “Listen, I’m sorry, I’m going to let you off at that McDonald’s up there. Is that alright with you?”

She looked stricken, then rearranged herself and nodded. “That’s fine.”

The car crept towards the golden yellow M and stopped in front of windows advertising the dollar menu in reds and blues. Inside, people sat over hamburgers and fries, sipping on iced Cokes, oblivious. Lydia unlocked the door and gathered the straps of her backpack onto one shoulder.

“Wait,” said Howard. He pulled out his wallet and ruffled through some tattered bills. “Take this.”

She looked suspiciously at his outstretched hand. “Is this a joke?”

“No, it’s fifty bucks.”

Lydia pushed the door open, and the car beeped in protest. “You don’t owe me anything,” she said, but she didn’t leave.

“Sure I do,” said Howard, shaking the bills. “I do.”

Lydia took the money from him slowly. She counted the bills before folding and pocketing them. With one hand on the doorframe, she looked around once more at the photograph on the visor, at the keys limp in the ignition, at Howard’s face. He felt his lips twitch with the effort of keeping her gaze. “Thank you,” she said. She slid out into the brisk air and closed the door.

Howard put the car in reverse.

She crouched down to speak at him through the window. “Money’s always tight,” she said.

He saw her growing smaller as he swung his car around toward the freeway. He caught a glimpse of her holding the door open for someone in the rearview mirror, and then she was gone. Howard breathed in deeply. He drove on in a deep peace, as if the road were underwater and the lights on the dashboard flickering in and out of his vision were dim pulses from the surface.

When Howard got home, Lauren was asleep after all. He walked in the door with his briefcase in one hand and switched on the light with the other. He trudged into the kitchen, stared at the catfish fillet in the oven, decided that he wasn’t hungry. Howard snuck up the stairs and into the bedroom. He kicked off his shoes. Lauren was under the blankets, one arm thrown over his side. He listened to the rattle of her breath, and a warm ache rose in his throat. Howard set the briefcase down as he checked the messages on his phone. He would have to call his project manager back tomorrow.

With a low-throated sigh, Howard stripped down to his boxers and climbed into bed, gently nudging aside his wife’s arm as he slid onto the cotton sheets. He pulled the covers over his body and turned to look at Lauren. She had buried half her face in a nest of splayed hair on the pillow. Her lips were parted slightly. With a wandering eye, he traced the contours of her nose, her jaw, the soft hollow at the base of her throat, all the time remembering the quick heat of his pulse against the plastic condom wrapper. To stifle his shame, Howard ventured a hand to his wife’s quiet thigh. She muttered something in her sleep. Howard imagined that it was for him, that she was dreaming for him, and, smelling the toothpaste on her breath, he sank finally into a sleep that forgave him.