The hitcher thanks us and gets out. He grounds his bulging rucksack and produces a crumpled pack of cigarettes. Mandy looks over at me, her chipped cherry nails splayed-out across her bulge as if she’s trying to stop the kid from floating off, “you know you just put our baby at risk”, she said. I push down the indicator and check the mirror; Mandy blows back her fringe, “you ever do that again!”. I give the rear-view a twist and see my dad staring back. “Our kid might need a ride someday”, and right then, I sound like him too. Mandy looks out of the window, at the awkward youth in faded denim, his hand raised in a grateful farewell. When she looks back at me, the fire’s been extinguished from her eyes, and I sense that maybe, she just waved at a mother’s son.

The car is quiet as we trundle forward, the young man disappearing behind us as he walks, and we drive, and he dissolves into a small, pale blue point along the stretch of dark tarmac. He disappears into the bush, the trees enveloping him, and I see, ever so faintly, the orange smear of his backpack hit the floor, sleeping bag unfurled. The car is quiet, like one of us has said something they shouldn't, something the other is making a point to ignore. Except nothing has been said. That’s the trouble. The indicator ticks on for a full minute after I’ve pulled back onto the road, and neither of us reaches to turn it off, so it keeps counting out the seconds between us.

Mandy has her feet up on the dash, toes pressed against the glass. Six months ago, I’d have told her to get them down, and she’d have left them there on purpose, and we’d have grinned about it like we’d gotten away with something. Now I say nothing, and she says nothing, and her feet stay where they are like two small flags planted in territory I’ve already lost. I reach for the radio. A woman’s voice is selling mattresses, then a man’s voice is selling the same mattresses, and I twist the dial through static until I land on a song we used to know. She reaches over and turns it off with a tired click.

“I’m not in the mood,” she says.

“Okay.”

“It’s not about you.”

“I said okay.”

She looks at me and I watch the road. A sign announces fuel in forty kilometres, and I do the maths on the tank for something to do.

“Do you think he got a lift?” she asks, quietly, and I almost miss it.

“Who?”

“The kid.”

“He didn’t look like he was in a hurry.”

“I mean tonight. It’ll be dark in an hour.” She’s turned toward the window again, and her breath makes a small, shrinking cloud on the glass. “I keep thinking about his mom. Whether she knows where he is.”

I want to say something that would close the distance. She probably doesn’t, and she’s probably worried sick, and that’s why we stopped. I want to say, You were right to be angry, and I was right to stop. But the words sit behind my teeth like pills I can’t swallow.

What comes out is, “He’s a grown man, Mand.”

“He’s somebody’s boy.”

“So’s every man on the road.”

She doesn’t answer. I’ve said the wrong thing, or the right thing in the wrong voice, and it’s my father’s voice again, opening and closing an argument in one smooth phrase. The sun slides low and turns the dashboard orange. Mandy’s hand drifts from her belly to the seat between us, palm up, almost, not quite, an invitation. I look at it, the chipped cherry polish, the small crescent of dirt under one nail. I could take it. It would be the easiest thing in the world.

Instead I check my mirror, because there’s a truck behind us. By the time I look back, her hand has gone, folded away in her lap with the other, and she’s studying her knuckles like they might tell her something.

“We should stop soon,” I say. “Find somewhere.”

“Fine.”

“There might be a motel at the next town.”

“I said fine.”

Somewhere behind us, in the darkening scrub, a boy is lying in a sleeping bag with his boots beside him and his cigarette burning down to the filter, looking up at the first stars. I envy him. I can’t say why. He has nowhere to be and no one to be afraid of becoming.