Grace no longer fought Peter’s move to Taiwan. Peter no longer asked her to join him.

Peter glanced over at Grace. She was tapping incessantly on the edge of thesteering wheel with her long, silver-white fingernails, and staring straight ahead.

LAST CHANCE BY THOMAS O’DELL 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 07

Grace saw Peter to the airport. It was one of those matters of obligation we take on when it no longer matters. When the tying of loose ends had lapsed into a dull, aching silence earlier that day, Grace had announced, without emotion, “I’ll drive you to the airport.”

So they sat now in silence as the faintly orange lights of the highway whizzed past them, and the flashing yellow lights of construction, and the large orange pasteboards announcing what lanes would be closed when. It was a peaceful silence in its own way, for they were both now bowed at the feet of the inevitable. Grace no longer fought Peter’s move to Taiwan. Peter no longer asked her to join him. They were like two barges long tethered together but now free, who continued to drift in the same direction at …