Chapter 2: The Asphalt Smell (David)

The door didn’t just close; it sealed with a pressurized hiss that suggested the life I’d lived for forty years was now officially out of oxygen. I stood on the porch of the Victorian I’d spent six years renovating, my fingers still buzzing from the vibration of the deadbolt sliding home. In my left hand, the leather strap of my duffel bag dug a slow, deep groove into my palm. In my right, the divorce decree felt heavier than the suitcase. 

I didn't look at the windows. I knew Sarah wouldn't be behind the curtains, and the thought of her empty kitchen—the soapstone counters I’d oiled by hand, the light fixture we’d found in that barn in Vermont—was enough to make my ribs ache. Instead, I looked at the driveway. My 1988 Land Cruiser sat idling, a plume of white exhaust curling into the grey Cypress Bend morning like a question mark. 

The air tasted of damp cedar and the sharp, chemical bite of fresh asphalt from the road crew three blocks over. It was a smell that usually meant progress. Today, it just smelled like the end of the world.

I walked down the steps, my boots thudding against the wood. Every vibration felt like a personal failure. I’d spent my career building things—bridges, high-rises, sturdier foundations for people who lived in flood zones—but I couldn't keep a three-bedroom house from collapsing under the weight of ten years of silence. 

I tossed the duffel into the passenger seat. It landed with a dull thud against a stack of blueprints I hadn't looked at in weeks. I climbed in, the springs of the driver's seat groaning in a familiar, tired greeting. The interior of the Cruiser smelled of old pennies and dried mud. It was the only place left where I didn't feel like a guest.

I shifted into reverse. My hand ghosted over the radio dial, but I pulled back. I couldn't do music today. Not even the news. I needed the silence to be as loud as it wanted to be. 

As I backed out, I saw Elias through the rearview mirror. He was standing by his mailbox across the street, wearing that same tattered flannel shirt he’d worn every Tuesday for a decade. He didn't wave. He just watched, his hands deep in his pockets, a silent witness to the exodus. I wondered if he knew. In a town like Cypress Bend, the news of a marriage dissolving probably traveled faster than the mail Elias was waiting for.

I hit the street and shifted into first. The gears ground—a protest against the suddenness of the departure. 

"I know, girl," I muttered, my voice sounding like gravel in the small cabin. "I'm not thrilled about it either."

I drove toward the heart of town. Cypress Bend was a place of aggressive charm—hanging flower baskets that always looked too hydrated, storefronts painted in historical palettes of ‘Dusty Rose’ and ‘Cobalt Shadow.’ Normally, the sight of it grounded me. Today, the symmetry of the town square felt like a mockery. People were walking to the bakery, shaking umbrellas, laughing at some private joke. They were all moving in loops, returning to the same beds they’d slept in the night before. I was the only thing on a linear path out.

I stopped at the light on Main and Third. To my left was Miller’s Hardware. I’d spent thousands of dollars in there. Jim Miller knew my preferred thickness for shim stock and how I liked my coffee. I looked away. If I saw Jim, I’d have to explain why I was driving a packed truck at ten in the morning on a workday.

The light changed. I turned right, heading toward the interstate ramp. 

The asphalt smell intensified. Two blocks ahead, the orange cones began. A crew from the county was resurfacing the bridge over the coulee. I slowed to a crawl, the tires of the Land Cruiser tacking against the fresh, black slurry. 

The heat coming off the road shimmered in the morning mist. It was a toxic, heady scent—bitumen and diesel. I watched a man in a neon vest swing a rhythmic hand-signal, his face bored and glistening with sweat despite the bite in the air. He didn't care about the blueprints in my passenger seat or the fact that my wedding ring was currently sitting in a ceramic dish on a dresser I no longer owned. To him, I was just another bumper in a line of bumpers.

I rolled down the window. The roar of the paving machine filled the cabin—a grinding, mechanical hunger. I watched the thick, black ribbon of road unfurl behind the machine. It looked so simple. You scrape away the old, cracked layer, you pour the hot liquid, you smooth it out. In an hour, it’s hard enough to support a semi-truck. 

Why was it so much harder with a life? I’d tried the patches. Sarah and I had done the therapy, the "date nights" that felt like job interviews, the long walks where we talked about everything except the fact that we’d stopped looking at each other. The cracks had just kept growing until the foundation itself was gone.

The flagger waved me through. I accelerated, the engine of the Cruiser roaring as I climbed the incline. 

I hit the merge for I-49. The speedometer climbed: fifty, sixty, sixty-five. The steering wheel shook—the alignment had been off for months, another thing I’d "get around to" when things calmed down. It never calmed down. 

I looked at the dashboard clock. 10:42 AM. By now, the lawyers would have received the digital confirmation. By now, Sarah might be moving my remaining shoes into a box in the garage. Or maybe she was just sitting in the quiet, finally breathing without the weight of my presence in the house. That thought hurt worse than the anger.

The landscape started to flatten out, the dense oaks of the Bend giving way to the sprawling, industrial fringes of the parish. I passed the refinery, its silver towers glinting like a futuristic city I wasn't invited to. 

My phone buzzed in the cup holder. I didn't reach for it. I knew it was either my sister, checking in with that pitying lilt in her voice, or my foreman, asking why the site survey for the Miller project hadn't been uploaded yet. Neither of them had the answer I was looking for, mostly because I didn't know what the question was.

I gripped the wheel until my knuckles turned white. I was forty-two years old, and everything I owned was currently vibrating in a rusted-out SUV on a highway heading south. 

I reached for the duffel bag and zipped it open one-handed, feeling for the small, heavy object I’d tucked into the side pocket at the last second. My fingers found it: a brass plumb bob. It was my grandfather’s. He’d taught me that if you want something to stand, it has to be true to the earth. You can't lie to gravity. 

I pulled it out and let it hang from its cord over the center console. As the Land Cruiser hit a bump, the brass weight swung wildly, a chaotic pendulum. 

"Find center," I whispered. 

The weight slowed, eventually settling into a steady, vertical line, unaffected by the speed of the car or the roar of the wind through the cracked window. It was the only thing in the world that knew exactly where it stood.

I kept driving until the smell of the asphalt finally faded, replaced by the salty, stale breath of the coast. I didn't have a destination yet, only a direction. South. Further into the heat. Further into the places where the roads ended in water.

The fuel light flickered on—a small, amber eye watching me from the dark of the dash. I ignored it for five miles, then ten. I wanted to see how far a man could go on nothing but momentum and a ghost of a plan.

Eventually, the engine sputtered. A warning. A cough of protest.

I pulled off at a dilapidated gas station that looked like it had been held together by luck and several coats of lead paint. A hand-painted sign in the window read: *ICE - BAIT - NO REFUNDS.*

I stepped out of the truck, and the humidity hit me like a physical blow. It was thick and heavy, smelling of marsh gas and rotting lilies. This wasn't the manicured wood-smoke air of Cypress Bend. This was something older. Something that didn't care about Victorian houses or divorce decrees.

I walked toward the pump, my legs feeling heavy and disconnected. As I reached for the nozzle, a black sedan pulled in behind me. It was too clean for this part of the parish. The windows were tinted dark enough to be illegal.

I didn't think much of it until the driver’s side door opened. 

A man stepped out. He was wearing a suit that cost more than my truck. He didn't look like he was there for gas. He looked like he was looking for me.

My hand tightened on the pump handle. I looked back at the Land Cruiser, at the brass plumb bob still swaying over the console. I had spent my life trying to find a solid foundation, trying to build things that would last. But as the man in the suit started walking toward me, his hand reaching into the breast pocket of his jacket, I realized that some things are built on sand for a reason.

"David Miller?" he called out. His voice was smooth, like polished stone.

I didn't answer. I just watched him.

"I have something that belongs to you," he said, stopping ten feet away. "Something you forgot in the house."

He held out a small, velvet-lined box. It wasn't my ring. It was too large for that. 

I took a step forward, the smell of the marsh and the lingering scent of hot asphalt from the highway swirling together in my head. I reached out, my fingers trembling just enough for him to notice.

When he opened the box, it wasn't a memento of my marriage. It was a key. A heavy, iron key with a rusted bow and a bit that looked like a jagged tooth.

"The house in Cypress Bend was never the point, David," the man said, his eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that made the hair on my arms stand up. "It’s time to go to the other one."

He turned and walked back to his car without another word. The sedan roared to life and sped back toward the highway, leaving a cloud of dust that tasted of salt and secrets.

I looked down at the key in my hand. Then I looked at the road ahead. The asphalt ended a hundred yards further down, dissolving into a gravel path that disappeared into the reeds.

I didn't fill the tank. I got back into the Land Cruiser, put it into gear, and drove past the gas station, past the "No Refills" sign, and straight toward the emerald wall of the marsh. 

The plumb bob swung hard to the left as I hit the gravel, then it went dead still. 

I reached out and grabbed it, crushing the cold brass into my palm until it bruised the skin. I wasn't just leaving Cypress Bend anymore. I was following a ghost.

Behind me, the sun began to sink below the tree line, casting a long, distorted shadow of the Land Cruiser across the broken road, pointing the way into the dark.