God had delivered her to him.
He had been missing the signs. Now that his eyes were open, it all made sense. It was so clear he felt stupid he hadn’t seen it before. The prize was Charlie all along. It must be. Could it be that even Kit’s rejection was part of the plan? Kit was never going to take him back; she had a new love, the love he knew all too well. The love of a parent. All this time his focus had been Kit, but he hadn’t wanted to admit how much she had changed, how she had lost her edge, been clipped by small town comforts, her scent unfresh with stasis. He had a chance to start over with this new child, forge new adventures. He could raise his pup even better than he’d raised Kit because the girl was half him. Unblemished. Superior. Praise God.
Twenty minutes into her walk to the Big Sky Motel, Charlie passed her home and saw a set of headlights pointed away from the house. She thought, at first, that her mother must have woken up and beaten her there. But why hadn’t Kit passed her on the way? She turned down the rough road, crossed the rusting cattle guard on tiptoe. The hens burbled in their hutch as she passed by. Now that she was closer she could see the lights were low, not a truck but a car. Her chest tightened up and she stopped to locate whoever was waiting at her house. She reached around to flip the safety off her mother’s gun. She was trying to make out the car’s color through the glare when a man appeared and clucked his tongue.
“Your mama let you run around at all hours of the morning?”
It was Manny. She grinned and laughed a little, feeling mighty glad to see him. Her luck, it seemed, was turning.
“You scared the crap out of me,” she said, letting out a nervous laugh. “What are you doing here so early?”
She thought Manny looked irritated at first, though it was hard to tell in the dark. But when he spoke she could hear she’d been mistaken.
“You ever get a wrong feeling?” he said. “Like something’s going south? I woke up an hour ago and couldn’t shake the worry that something had happened to you and your mama. When I knocked and you didn’t answer . . . well, I admit I feared the worst.”
She thought it strange he’d go to all that trouble on a feeling, but then maybe that was what family did for each other. How would she know?
“Well, what are you doing wandering around in the dark?”
Now that he was here in front of her, her plan seemed flimsy and childish.
“It’s okay, sweetheart, I won’t tell,” he said, nice as can be, enough to relax her a little.
“Um,” she said, hoping her nerves didn’t show. “Actually, I was looking for you. I was thinking . . . maybe I could stay with you for a while. If you don’t mind.”
He grinned and tilted his head to the side. “You do what you want, don’t you?” he said. “You know, the right thing to do is call up your mother and discuss this with her. I gather by the early hour she doesn’t know you’re here.”
“No,” Charlie said. “No, we can’t tell Kit, not yet. I need to get away from her. Look, I know what happened. I know she took me from you. Before I was born.” She kicked a cake of dried mud off the hubcap. “I could just kill her for it.”
“Ah,” he said. “I hoped we could discuss it all together. But it’s a touchy topic with your mama.” His tone didn’t quite match his words, like he was thinking of something else as he spoke.
“I know,” she said. “I tried to talk to her about it and she shut it down.”
He was quiet, long enough that she was about to say something just to break the silence.
“Lookee here,” he finally said. “How about this? Let’s get out of here. We’ll go do something, just for fun. In a few hours, we’ll call up your mama so she doesn’t worry her head off, and then we’ll make a plan. All of us. Together.”
The thought of talking to Kit right now made Charlie sick to her stomach. But she liked the sound of hanging out with Manny for the day. He swung open the car door for her to get in.
“Hey, I just want to get some of my things from upstairs,” Charlie said.
Manny seemed to tense at this. “Why don’t we shove off? Kit could be back any minute. Don’t you think?”
He wasn’t wrong, but she wanted her shit. “Won’t be a minute.”
As she walked up the swaybacked steps to the front door Charlie brushed down the hairs on the back of her neck. Inside, she detected a dank smell, not of home. An armadillo, perhaps, had burrowed and died under the baseboards. She found her muddy boots where she’d last kicked them off by the stairs. She went around back to the laundry shed and found her favorite jeans in a pile by the washer. There was a wet load in there, so, out of some rote courtesy, she gathered the clean clothes to put in the dryer. In the stiff tangle, she noticed something odd, an article of clothing she didn’t recognize. A miniskirt. She shook it out and with it a skimpy top, a manner of dress that had no business being in this house. Kit would never wear garbage like this, Charlie thought. Unless she had completely lost her mind. It couldn’t be her mom’s, but if it was, all the more reason for her to get the fuck out of whatever nervous breakdown was about to happen.
Still, Charlie found it difficult to leave the house, as if it might be the last time she would see it in a long while. She brushed her teeth and scrubbed her pits, flopped down on her bed and stared out the faded chintz curtains she’d looked at every day of her life. Of course she’d be back. She could come home whenever she liked. Manny issued a short toot from the car horn outside. She went downstairs and locked up. Then, as she left the house, she slammed the old screen door behind her, a gesture that made leaving feel more ordinary.
As she approached the car she noticed there was something different about Manny today. He was beginning to look like a dad. A little concerned and tired around the eyes, his shirt misbuttoned and collar half up like he hadn’t bothered to look in the mirror this morning. It was sweet. Why did Kit have to be so hard to love when Manny had shown her it could be so easy? She felt wicked for choosing him, but right now she was sick of the struggle, sick of being tough and working so hard to matter. Maybe some time apart would do everyone good.
Chapter Thirty-Six