It was my turn to talk. I didn’t care about backseat fucks, Marilyn Zodda, or twenty-one-year-olds having nervous breakdowns. They were momentous to Lily, the stars making up the constellation of her life. Telling me was her way of positioning them, ordering their past chaos so they would make sense for both of us.

But I didn’t care, because I knew things now that she didn’t. In the end, it came down to a fundamental fact: She had kidnapped her son. Torn open the fabric of sanity and reached deep into the darkness behind it for an act she thought would save her from falling into that dark altogether. The horrors we’re capable of doing to save ourselves.

In itself, it made everything else in life, much less her story, supremely unimportant.

Later in passing, in anecdotes, in late-night confessions and midday conversations, I heard the rest of the story. She fled with the infant across Pennsylvania, often with it on her lap, the hum and bumping of the car over the roads a natural rockabye-baby that kept it quiet or gurgling happily. It liked to shake its hands or take her little finger in its mouth and suck noisily. It, he (it was a while before she thought of the child as a boy) enjoyed music and often jiggled frantically when rock and roll was on the radio.

She “christened” him Lincoln after a week on the road. To pass the time while driving, she thought for hours about different men’s names. Twice when the weather got nasty she stopped at a cheap motel and spent a contented evening scanning local phone books and newspapers for names, then saying interesting ones aloud to herself and the child nearby on the bed. But “Lincoln Vincent” didn’t sound good. Since she had to change her last name now, she decided to find one that fit well with “Lincoln.” “Aaron” came to her somewhere near Pepper Pike, Ohio.

At first she had driven west as fast as possible without breaking the speed limit. However, once across the border into Ohio, she moseyed around the back roads of the state, each morning poring over a map and then aiming toward towns whose names interested her: Mingo Junction, Tipp City, Wyoming.

After buying the car, Lily began the trip with a little over six hundred dollars. She tried to spend it carefully, but there was gas and food and so many things to buy for Lincoln that her money was gone in three weeks. She stopped in Gambier, Ohio, and took a job at a combined occult bookstore/head shop that catered to Kenyon College students. She told the hippie who owned the place she was running from a junkie husband back East who beat her. The boss said only, “Bummer,” and allowed her to bring the child to work. She rented a tiny apartment near campus and, when not working, learned how to take care of a baby.

From the beginning, people were kind and accommodating. She didn’t know if that was because her luck had changed or because they saw how happy she was with her radiant, chuckling child. Joy brings you quickly into the hearts of others. She knew what she’d done was monstrous, but she’d never been so happy. Her life had two exclusive purposes now which, miraculously, played against each other wonderfully and excitingly: she was a new mother, she was a criminal.

Lincoln and Lily Aaron lived in Gambier almost two years. The small college town was the perfect place for them. It was rural but stimulating, liberal and diverse enough so that a pretty young single mother and her toddler didn’t raise eyebrows. Of course, she was careful about what she said. If pressed, only with the greatest reluctance would she tell the story of husband Rick back in New York who’d caused them to flee in the first place.

When the bookstore went broke after a year, she began working as day manager and hostess at a steak house in town. That meant putting Lincoln in a day-care center, but the one in Gambier was a lovely light-filled place, full of teachers overflowing with a leftover 1960s-ish enthusiasm for the care and education of young children. At the same time, Lily was able to learn more about a business she had really grown to love. She made friends and for a short time had a boyfriend who was an exchange student from Vietnam. He was gentle and smart and an extraordinarily good lover. When he suggested she go back to New York, divorce Rick Aaron, and return to marry him, she left Ohio instead.

On a hot, quiet Saturday in August when everyone was out of town or inside hiding from the sun, she and her stolen child got into the loaded Opel (which had been checked and tuned for the occasion) and drove away. She told Lincoln they were going on an adventure to someplace new and different, and if they liked it there, they’d stay. That was fine with him, so long as she was around. Whether it came from not knowing his father or an inherently unsure nature, Lincoln did not like to be separated from Lily for long. It was all right at the day-care center because he liked the people there and it was clear they liked him. But his mother was the undisputed center of his universe. It didn’t matter if he liked life here: if Mom said it was time to go and it would be fun where they were going, he was the first one in the car. So long as she was there, so long as he knew she was always an arm’s length away, it was okay.

They drove north because of a man she had learned about and contacted in Milwaukee who could create false papers and passports for her and the child. Not having been near a big city for two years, she found the clash and clamor of it jarring. Once the forged papers were ready they headed north again, ending up in Appleton, Wisconsin. Lawrence University was there, and although it was a much larger town than Gambier, she liked it and they stayed.

Portland, Oregon, was the last stop before the Aaron family landed in Los Angeles three years ago. Almost immediately after arriving, she saw an ad in the L.A. Weekly for a job in a restaurant. It had been placed by Ibrahim Safid.

“Why didn’t you tell me you knew?”

“Lily, if you were in my position, what would you have done?”

“Run away long ago. But that’s because I’ve been running for ten years. The slightest blip on the screen and I’m outta there.” Naked, she sat in the lotus position facing me. “Have you told anyone?”

“No one. Look at me! Believe that: I’ve told no one.”

“All right. What can I say, I have to believe it. What are you going to do, Max? I cannot believe this; you know. You know about it. What are you going to do?”

I put a hand on her throat and gently pushed her back down. Lifting myself, I climbed on top and, spreading her legs with a knee, slipped very carefully inside her vagina. Her eyes widened but she didn’t speak. I pushed until I was as deep as I could go, then moved her arms over her head and covered them with my own. Silently, we lay like that for some time. The moment and the knowledge between us transcended sex, yet I was very hard. Her mouth was to my ear when she spoke barely above a whisper.

“I love you. No matter what you do to us, or me, know I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone.”

“I do know that.”

“It’s so tragic. This is all I ever wanted from life: you here, Lincoln sleeping in his room. I was just praying, but stopped because I didn’t know what for. Praying you won’t tell, praying you’ll never stop loving me. It’s all mixed up. And who am I to pray? What God do I go to for help? People say they want justice, but that’s not true. We only want things to work for us and no one else. Even now, a big part of me keeps saying I don’t deserve this ‘cause I’m a nice person. I do good things for others. Isn’t that crazy? Isn’t that sick? Oh, Max, what are you going to do? Do you know?”

“Yes. I’m going to marry you and try to be a good father to Lincoln.”

“Oh God. Oh God.” She began breathing oddly, as if she were panting. Our faces were inches away and we stared into each other’s eyes. Neither of us smiled, there was no joy in or near us. No matter how much she hoped for it, I don’t think she was prepared for what I had said. Keeping her unforgivable secret meant giving up most of what I believed.