The music came through the speakers softly, laying a soundtrack to our nightly drive through the rain. She had not turned the steering wheel so much as an inch in the last 20 minutes. The road was painfully straight.

His head lilted with the music, syncopated sleepiness to light percussion and soft acoustic melodies. The corners of her eyes were pooling tears and dropping them down like bombs, shifting over skin and falling. The tears splashed on her lap, tiny mushroom clouds. She looked down and closed her eyes for a little longer than a standard blink.

Up ahead there was a curve approaching.

You think you see
what is not there,
and in the shallow curves of your mind
you seek to believe,
but the truth is in the journey,
and we’ll get there if we try

She sang along to the music as he slept, her voice pushing him further back into the recesses of slumber. She checked his seatbelt, and unbuckled her own.

Up ahead there was a curve approaching.

She took her hands off the wheel and wiped her eyes.