He found a narrow stretch of old buckled pavement and kept to it, winding into the Sandhills. In the valleys, big dunes rose up around the cab, scrub-covered hulks that blotted the view of all but the road ahead.

Tom climbed to a high point and parked in the bunchgrass alongside the road. He pulled his flask and climbed up the bumper, onto the warm hood. He leaned back against the windshield and looked at the darkening sky.

It felt like nothing but sky here. No buildings, hardly a tree—just a kingdom of grass in all directions, a world of sky meeting the low horizon all around.

He still remembered the feeling he’d had here as a kid. A vague terror somewhere in his blood.

He remembered a summer rainstorm that rolled in late one afternoon. He’d been out on the range fixing fences with his grandfather, miles from anything, when massive black thunderheads the size of continents seemed to rise out of the prairie and cover them over fast. He’d felt the dark sky lowering as if to crush them; he’d cowered reflexively, grinding his teeth and gripping his elbows as they’d waited out the pounding storm in the truck. Tom remembered his grandfather smoking Winstons and humming to himself as the thunder rumbled over them.

On clear days, blue sky towered like an ocean. Tom remembered that he used to avoid looking up; he remembered the irrational, overwhelming sense that he might float up, untethered and helpless, until he disappeared into the clouds.

Somehow, back amongst these strange rolling dunes, looking up into this sky for the first time since that summer as a boy, the idea of floating away didn’t seem so bad.

He thought about Melissa. She’d already been to the cemetery before he’d left town; he’d recognized the fresh clutch of white Gerber daisies she’d left on the grave. He wondered how she’d spent the rest of the day.

He’d finally called, from a filling station on the Iowa side of the Quad Cities, just because he couldn’t shake the feeling that he should. He’d left the number to his grandfather’s place on her machine, but he doubted she’d use it.

Tom wondered what he’d tell her if she did. Found a great job. The sky’s the limit.

Stars begin to flicker in the purple nothing above. His dad always said they were better out here. Tom tipped the flask and watched, knowing the truth.

They were the same here as anywhere. He was just in a different spot.

If she called, he guessed he’d tell her he’d moved.