Berengaria's Best: The Ultimate Short Story Collection

Crossing the Line*

For three weeks, a packed suitcase had sat in the trunk of his car. It wasn't a whim, or the result of a temporary mood. No Daddy's going out for a pack of cigarettes and just never comes back.

It had been a painful ratcheting forward, like trying to accelerate while jumping the clutch pedal, that had him secretly downing stomach relaxers and sleeping pills.

On a piece of scrap paper, he'd furtively calculated how much money he could withdraw from the bank without Lynn and the boys going hungry. Then he tore it up in disgust, calling himself every name in the book.

Not a week later, he found himself in front of the computer answering job postings all over the country, mentally crossing his fingers that none of them would solidify even as he proofread his resume one last time and clicked 'send'.

But they had. Invitations to interviews in four different cities had come in and he'd quickly stuffed some clothing in a suitcase in the predawn dark living room, slipping out the front door without making hardly a sound.

He didn't make it far. He sat behind the wheel of his car staring at the bushes as the street lamps in the apartment complex's parking lot dimed and blinked off, asking himself what the hell he thought he was doing. Who the hell he thought he was.

Then he'd started the engine and driven to the local donut shop, bought a dozen of Lynn's favorites and gone back home with a smile on his face that didn't reach his eyes.

The suitcase he'd left in the trunk.

That was three weeks ago.

Now he was almost to the interstate.

He couldn't say how it had happened. It just had. One moment, he'd been trying to get Peter to stop shrieking and eat his dinner while Robbie danced in front of the blaring TV like a tiny hooligan, the sound of toys being kicked into the wall reverberating like gunshots. The next he'd gotten up, grabbed his keys, wallet and phone, put on his jacket and left, closing the door on his children, on his marriage, on eight years of his life.

The traffic on the Interstate was light. He merged in, keeping pace with the other cars, the other travelers on their own journeys to unknown destinations, into unknown futures.

There was a rest stop about an hour away he'd pull in at, call the nearest job two states further west.

Tell them he was coming. That he was already on his way.