Written by: Piper Kimball
Second Place Winner of the 2026 Jennie Hackman Memorial Prize for Short Fiction
The armistice had become routine, and so it came as a shock to Beth when the once-familiar, now-forgotten engine grinding began again. She felt, for a moment, blissfully sucked down time’s vortex, and recalled the early days of the Ford – when the slobby, peeling beige paint felt indicative of honesty and trustworthiness, rather than shitty quality. She remembered the easy, youthful joy of a new car; how they had felt like little birds, fresh from the nest and soaring on news wings, as they flew down the interstate. All of this struck her in an instant, but dissipated just as quickly to annoyance. It was grinding again.
Momentarily having forgotten her purpose in starting the car, she was surprised to hear Eddy’s knuckle-rap on the driver’s side window. She stepped quickly from the seat and out into the early spring air. She sucked it in greedily: the smell of just-melted snow seeping into soil, and the threat of one last dusting. She avoided brushing against Eddy as she stepped by him, bothered by the proximity of his arms. Bothered by the way she could feel warmth radiating off him – more bothered that yesterday she would have loved to be enveloped by it. She rounded the car the long way, feeling his eyes follow, and took her seat in the passenger side, giving the motel a final glance.
Her back ached. Maybe the hard mattress and flat pillows.
The Ford was running now, in earnest, despite the grinding. The heating was quick to banish the cold outside air, and it roared off the pebble drive just as it always would have. Eddy turned left, and headed for the highway.
“Not much farther to the city. We’ll make it by six.”
So he was breaching conversation, then.
“We might’ve made it last night, if we didn’t stop.” Beth didn’t look over, but she could feel the forlorn, angry look he gave her. He didn’t dignify her comment with a response. He kept driving. His fingers twitched.
She turned her attention to the window. It seemed silly, in the wake of everything, to go to a company party. But there had been a big success with the biggest account, and Eddy wanted to drink champagne and gab, and wanted to be the sort of man who brought his lovely wife in a nice dress to the company party in the city. He wanted to be the sort of man to whom everyone flocked next Monday at the office, with pretty platitudes of how lovely his wife was. He wanted to be the sort of man who was just breathing easy air; never feeling the saturation of every molecule with something unsaid. And Beth knew all of this, and so she would go. And she would wear the too-expensive dress and chit-chat and make the sort of jokes people made at company parties, and she wouldn’t cause a scene. Because she knew he deserved that, at least. But she would let herself stew in the passenger seat. That she would let herself have.
She watched the flat fields roll by, and the grass play victim to the ceaseless wind, and be blown, helplessly, rolling like muscles under young skin. She wondered if the little blades were afraid of the unseen, moving force. A street dog moved through the grass, fur going grey at the snout, and he limped by slowly, yet onwards.
She could hear the delicate twitch of Eddy’s fingers – pick out every moment he bit at his lips. His body was humming. He was so alive.
Eventually they pulled into a gas station.
“We won’t have to stop again before we get to the venue. Do you want something to eat?” Still, that unending warmth on his tongue, creeping up through his throat from somewhere deep inside. Coffee left to sit in the plastic pot, still holding on to heat at its center.
Without hesitating: “No, no. I don’t need anything.”
He gave her the look, and she remembered the agony of a sprained ankle many springs ago, and her refusal to sit down and rest. Always carrying the groceries, despite the crutches, never quelled. Now, she didn’t even have the energy to meet his eyes.
“Not even a soda? A Grape Fanta?” Her eyes fluttered shut, remembering the nostalgic fizz: something younger. One of those pestering expenses that sneak up behind you and add up to begging the bank for a loan. Not now.
“Pay for the gas with the twenty in my wallet. Don’t use the card.”
She didn’t even check the expression in her periphery. She knew well enough what it was. She knew he was chewing the dead skin off his lip, enough to draw blood.
Later, just before the skyline came into view, Eddy crossed the silence again.
“The radio will probably go out. It’s a dead zone here.”
She had been thumbing the lock on the glovebox, opening and shutting it in a consistent rhythm. It made a strange symphony with the grinding of the engine, and Eddy’s twitching, dancing fingers, which seemed suddenly both too loud and very distant. Her skull ached. The stiffness from this morning hadn’t worn off. She threw her head back, and laughed.
The radio went dead, scalpel sharp and sudden. She stopped the clicking, still chuckling. Even the grinding seemed to slow. Eddy’s fingers danced on.
She could almost hear the hum of steam coming off him. It invaded her side of the car, swallowing the dead, quiet air. He drove. They didn’t veer out of the lane, even slightly.
Quietly, respecting the sudden vigil, “That’s not funny.”
She didn’t stop – still chuckling to herself, she watched the fields roll and give way to the outskirts of the city, to the townhouses and train tracks. She watched lights in windows as civilization cropped back up. She watched the world spin, on and on, unstoppable. She thought about the grass blades again. It was all so delightfully funny; there was sunlight hitting her pale skin through the window. The radio fizzed back, resuscitated.
Eddy handed the keys to the valet rather awkwardly, playing off how she dodged his offered hand as he opened the passenger door. They handed their coats off at the check, and fell into the throng of people. Beth was taken with the sheer life of the scene. Warm bodies, bumping into one another, swaying to the jazz that hummed through the speakers and deep down into her bones. The flush of a young woman’s skin, her champagne gently sloshing in its glass. Boisterous laughter from a gaggle of suits. Tapping feet, cheeks stretching into smiles, reaching, outstretched hands. Eddy’s hands, actually, reaching for her. She was being waved over. A man stood at Eddy’s left.
She found herself grinning at the sight of David, lovely David, who used to come over for a dinner party once in a while. Broad-shouldered, a little less as he ages: graying, but heartily. He greets her with a hug. Expecting his usual overbearing charm, she gets only gentle arms. She can suddenly feel, and dread, the inevitable conversation. The air is thick with it. Eddy’s fingers twitch with it: drying red crease on his bottom lip. But the music plays on, and Beth is aware that she is, at least, alive.
She grounds herself through the automatic pleasantries, trying not to float away. David’s eyes crinkle, and there is an awkward breath before he begins. She can tell the words have been rolled over a thousand times, practiced in his head. They fall off the tongue unnaturally smooth.
“Beth, I was so sorry to hear it when Eddy told me. When my mom went through the second round, she said it wasn’t as bad.” A pause: better to lie, and placate, or be honest? “Well, I mean, it was bad. I guess it always is. But she knew what to expect, and, well, it saved her life. For a while, at least. I’ll always be grateful for that.”
Beth found herself mildly speechless. In the face of such sincerity, she was unsure how to respond with her own. That there was going to be no second round – that it was already decided. No matter what Eddy or David or anyone else had to say about it. For a while, at least. She felt completely unsure, unnatural, inhuman – and yet, so very alive.
She glanced at Eddy, then: that same profile, the round bridge of his nose she’d always loved, haloed in golden light from the ceiling. His fingers, their dance; the edges of him she’d sharpened, but the ones she had sanded away, too. She reached for his hand, let herself feel the familiar warmth of him, the slight sweat on his palm. His fingers stilled when they intertwined with hers. He squeezed back desperately, as if she was the lifeline.