In the trunk, David popped open the plastic pink suitcase and dug through some clothes until he retrieved a handful of Nature Valley granola bars. There were a few warm cans of Coke in the suitcase, as well—the only thing he’d been able to get his hands on at the time—and so he grabbed one of those, too.
When he shut the trunk, he was startled to find Ellie standing beside the car’s rear bumper. She was watching the smoking teenagers in the cheap Halloween masks, her hands limp at her sides. Her hair, sleek auburn strands that had been a carroty red when she was just a toddler, billowed gently in the breeze.
“Hey.” He reached out and grabbed her shoulder. Firmly. “What’d I say? Stay in the car until I came and got you, remember?”
She turned and looked up at him. Her face was pale, her mouth drawn and nearly lipless. A spray of light brown freckles peppered the saddle of her nose. There was some strange determination in her eyes, and David suddenly felt weakened in the presence of her. It wasn’t the first time she had made him feel this way.
David took a breath and caressed the side of her face with his knuckles. “Go back in the car, Little Spoon,” he told her.
“But I gotta go to the bathroom, remember?”
No, he hadn’t remembered. His brain felt like a rusted hamster wheel clacking around in his skull. He glanced around until he saw a brick outhouse with the word WOMEN on one door, MEN on the other.
“Okay,” he said, and went back around to the driver’s side of the Oldsmobile. He tossed the granola bars and the Coke on the seat, then pulled the key from the ignition. The Oldsmobile shuddered and died. Abruptly, he wondered what he would do if the car wouldn’t start again. Steal another car? Would he even know how to do it? People in movies always seemed to know how to hot-wire a car—it was like tying your shoes, apparently—but he had no clue.
He placed a hand against the small of Ellie’s back and ushered her forward. “Go on,” he told her. “Be quick. And don’t talk to anyone. I’ll wait right out here for you.”
He thought he heard her sob, so he stopped her, crouched down, and looked her in the eyes. They were glassy, but she still wasn’t crying. She didn’t even look all that frightened. In fact, it looked like she was studying him. Scrutinizing him.
“Don’t cry, hon,” he told her anyway. It sounded like the right thing to say, and it was certainly important. “Okay?”
“I don’t understand this,” she told him.
“Little Spoon,” he said, squeezing her shoulder more tightly. He didn’t want attention drawn to them, and an eight-year-old girl becoming upset in the parking lot of a rest stop at this hour would surely do the trick.
“I’m worried about Mom,” she said. “When can I see her?”
“Hon,” he said . . . and he wanted to hug her, but the last thing he wanted to do was make a scene, even if it was only in front of the masked teenagers smoking by the trash can. He could risk doing nothing that would cause someone to remember them at a later date. Of course, Ellie didn’t know the truth of it, so he couldn’t expect her to act accordingly.
That will have to change very soon, he thought. If we’re going to survive this, she’ll need to know the score. If not the whole truth, she’ll need to know something very close to it.
Now wasn’t the time, however.
In the end, Ellie turned away from him, his hand dropping from her shoulder. She wended around the group of teenagers with her head down and vanished into the women’s restroom.
I’ll tell her later, he promised himself, while simultaneously wondering if there would be a later.
When he found himself gnawing at his lower lip, he realized that he craved a cigarette. He’d smoked his last one . . . how many hours ago? It had still been daylight. There was a full carton of Marlboros on the top shelf of his bedroom closet, but they could have been on the moon for all their accessibility now. He glanced around, spotted a vending machine beyond the brick outhouse, but saw only columns of potato chips, chocolate bars, pretzels, and the like. Vaguely, he wondered if they still sold cigarettes in vending machines anymore.
In the quiet, his mind slipped back to earlier that evening and to the inexplicable thing that had happened in the car as they left their hometown in Maryland. He had been a rattled mess, his heart slamming in his chest, his mind spinning uncontrollably. . . until Ellie had reached over to him, her hand cool against his burning flesh . . .
He shook the notion from his mind. It was impossible.
After another minute passed and Ellie didn’t come out of the restroom, David began to panic. His arms still crossed, he began pacing back and forth in front of the door to the women’s room like a warden. The concrete walkway was covered in beetles; they crunched beneath his feet like potato chips. If she didn’t come out in the next thirty seconds—and he was now counting silently to himself—he would go in after her.