I Took a Wrong Turn in North Macedonia.

The engine ticked a while after it quit, the way a hot engine does.

And then that stopped too, and I could hear the water.

I sat there with both hands on the wheel.

The Škoda was tilted nose down, and the passenger door was against a bank of mud the color of strong tea.

I'd taken the back road on purpose.

The highway to Veles is faster, and I had no reason to be fast.

Biljana used to talk about this road, the old way through the Babuna foothills, the way her uncle drove her in a borrowed van when she was a girl.

Forty years she talked about going back to the town where she was born.

Forty years, I said, next summer.

Or when the knee is better.

Or when the car's been serviced.

Then she died, two winters ago.

And I rented a car in Skopje and told the girl at the counter I'd be back in a few days.

That was the only thing I told anyone.

Her name was on the tag on my key.

I couldn't have told you what it said.

I turned the key again.

A dry rattle.

A clatter of something loose under the floor.

And nothing caught.

I'd felt the back end go on the bend, that slow sideways drift where the wheel does nothing.

And then the ditch took us.

Afterward, there was a smell of hot oil.

I'd hoped it was just the mud.

I got out.