SHUFFLE BEFORE READING

(this story is meant to be read, and re-read, in any order.)

The family steps through the chrome doors and out of the diner, the sounds of 50s classics cutting off suddenly as the vestibule smooshes shut behind them.
Their footsteps scratch and scuffle across the gravel lot. Laney has her arm around her daughter, traces of milkshake-induced laughter still around their mouths. Grant sees his son mimicking his posture and smiles.
There's a ding and a flash as the car unlocks at their approach. Their tight unit splits, four people to four doors.
Something else splits as they pull out onto the two-lane highway that stretches quietly through the forest and between the mountains, the one that takes them just about everywhere they need to go. On this night, although they will pass no other travelers, the roads are busy with their past and present selves.

There is a bright moon tonight, and she is drunk on starlight and bourbon and the man sitting beside her.
His hands are firmly at ten-and-two and he takes the turns of the road with enough speed to feel the wind but slow enough to admit how careful he's being -- for they've both had their share, of bourbon and starlight and one another.
She lifts her head, feeling the spring air washing down over her.
He turns down the radio so they can hear the sound of a world that only contains the two of them, and the trees.
So this, then, is what it feels like to go home.

"You know," Charlie's father says to him while he awkwardly navigates the switchbacks, "when you're drive out here at night, you'll want to be careful of hitchhikers."
"Real ones?" Charlie asks, a bead of sweat on his brow as he slows around one final turn.
"Everything's real, if you want to get technical about it."
Charlie braves a glare at his father before returning his strict attention to the matter at hand. The headlights roll out the road before them, like a writer inventing things as they go along.

Zoe keeps glancing towards the sky, looking for something in between the branches of the trees. She's looking for the stars, the old fear from her childhood having come roaring back all these years later: that she will look up and find herself under different stars. It's not the stars themselves that she fears, but rather the dark intelligence that would responsible for such a shift.
As she approaches the intersection near the school, she can see by the bright moon that there's a break in the trees up ahead.
Her palms grow sweaty on the steering wheel.

He's seen things dart out of the trees, their furtive movements reminding him of kids on dares.

He knows these aren't kids, or at least they aren't human kids. Possibly somebody's kids, he thinks as he taps the brakes and flashes his high-beams at some something. The first time he brought Laney out here, when she didn't panic, that was when he knew. His mother, waiting at home, beat him to the punch of course, saying, "make yourself at home, dear" as though this was something she said to all the girls and not the most shocking admission of acceptance he'd ever heard.

He wonders, as he rushes to the hospital with Laney breathing heavy through the contractions in the backseat, about all the ways they'll surprise their kid in the years to come.

The curve of the road, the steady back-and-forth, starts to put her to sleep. It has been a long week -- aren't they all, these days? -- and she leans her head against the door. Her husband reaches over, squeezes her hand, and she faintly squeezes it back. The kids are in the back, dreaming their schemes (or vice versa).

All would be well, except that she knows what's waiting for her on the other end of a dream. She fights to stay in this liminal space, at least til the car gets home.

Static on the radio, headed home from Zoe's school play. They play a game, the four of them, listening for snatches of music and then trying to sing along -- points awarded for either the real song (Laney does a terrific Neko Case, Zoe a surprisingly good Boyfight) or something entirely made up (Charlie has them all laughing so hard that Grant almost needs to pull over).

With each tick of the turn signal, the cracked highway of infinite nows is kintsugied back into the same old two-lane road that takes them just about everywhere they need to go. They pull onto their quiet street, past Bradbury Farm and the Preston house.

And even after the car is off, settling into the spring night air next to their strange and rambling old house, the four of them sit there as though waiting to make sure the spell has passed. They look at one another, making sure they're all still there, all still them.