Sugar Faye held her throat. “Oh god, oh no. Well, that’s what I was—”
Kit grabbed her by the shoulders. “Do you know something? What’s this about?”
Sugar waved her hands around. “Yes, okay, hear me out, sorry, I’m just flustered. Listen, we were down in Yoakum visiting my cousin—she just had her gallbladder or her appendix or sump’m taken out so I set with her and brought up some of my kolaches—anyway, after we left we stopped for supper at our favorite steak house—”
“Sugar Faye, would you get to the damn point?”
“Yes, okay, so Leigh saw Charlie over there—”
“She did? Wait, where? At the steak house?”
“Ole Steak Taverne, hang on—” Sugar fished around the glove box for a map and pointed to the spot with a long pink nail. “Look, it’s oh, about eighty miles southwest of here. You could make it in an hour if you really book it.”
Kit took the map and traced the route from Pecan Hollow. A woozy feeling lapped against her, an echo of a memory, dispersed and vague.
“Anyway,” Sugar said. “Leigh says something just didn’t look right. Said Charlie was there with her dad, but that she didn’t want him to see her talking to Leigh. And of course, she doesn’t have a dad, so I felt pretty suspicious about that. But then Leigh said Charlie said to tell you she was okay, but of course that makes me even more suspicious, and I was gonna call you when we got home, but then I saw your truck and flagged you down and here we are.”
Kit leaned against her truck to take in what she’d heard. Charlie’s okay, for now at least. And she was with Manny, but why? If they were eating out in a restaurant, they weren’t exactly on the run, were they? Unless he had nothing to lose. With an awful start, she remembered the restaurant in Galveston with the giant crab. Maybe he didn’t want to hurt Charlie, maybe he was training her.
Sugar Faye seemed excited to have something useful for Kit. “Did that help?”
“Yes, thank you, thank you. I have to go now,” Kit said, swiveling toward the truck. Sugar turned her back around and pulled her into a soft, perfumed hug. Kit stiffened at first, but Sugar held on to her, and spoke into her ear.
“Girl, don’t you worry, okay?” she said sweetly. Sugar pulled back and wiped a tear, black with mascara, from under her eye. “I’m sorry about all that in church. Folks were just scared. We are gonna find your baby. I’m gonna get on the horn, call everyone I know to get their asses outside and start looking. Curfew be damned.”
Kit sighed, not wanting to waste any more time explaining that the people of Pecan Hollow would no sooner help her find her daughter than they would skip church on Sunday. Instead, she nodded and got in the truck. If the town did somehow pull together for her, then hallelujah, but she sure as shit wasn’t counting on it.
Chapter Forty-Four
Kit followed the map to the restaurant where Charlie was last seen, her foot never leaving the gas pedal as the night slurred past her. A steady rain of insects slapped the windshield, and the overworked engine groaned. At her feet, straw papers and loose napkins tumbled and bobbed in the stale air that curled through the half-open windows. She could feel the soft weight of her child against her breast, smell the clean scent of her new skin, hear her burble and coo. Even at this distance, she spoke to her with the full conviction the sound would carry. Hang on, baby. I’m coming.
When Kit approached Yoakum, the stench of rotten eggs became so intense she had to roll up the window. As she reached for the crank, it occurred to her, clear as a chime, where Manny had taken her girl. The smell of sulfur. The oil fields. He was taking Charlie back to the place where they had made her.
All the billboards had been taken down, no Mae or Elvis or Little Richard to lead the way. But she couldn’t miss Clifford’s Hollywood Palace. Though abandoned and dark, its sign still loomed over the highway. At this hour, the roads were nearly empty save for a few eighteen-wheelers punching through the night. She exited, parked by the entrance. There was a spry little hot rod pulled up closest to the stairs. A toy for Manny, she thought. She had been right to come here. She left her keys in the ignition and let down the tailgate as quietly as she could. Then she drew the machete from the bed of her truck and tapped it against her calf, a cold comfort.
An abrupt gust of wind cut a high pitch through the cracks in the sign behind her; all manner of vermin were rustling around in the weeds and the walls. Some yahoo had scrawled privit residense on a bowed sheet of plywood covering a downstairs window. As she approached the dusty, abandoned building, she kept her eye on the purple door with its hand-painted sign. No lights, no sounds. Please, let it not be too late.
Memories of the last time she had been here rose up around her like a stench. How he had ambushed her on bended knee, deserted her when she turned him down. How she had withered without him, rolled in her own mess, and begged for his return. She was ashamed to revisit that time with a wise mind. And when he finally slipped back into her life, as if he had never left, the way he held himself to her hips and forced himself, his genes, his very makeup inside of her. Here now, a new fear emerged. That he had taken Charlie not to hurt Kit, but to replace her.
The windows had been boarded up, but poorly. Kit peered through a gap in the plywood. There was a worried sound, and Kit held her breath to hear it. A rustling of wings—it was only the cooing of pigeons. She emptied a crate full of sooty spray bottles and rags and stood on it to see through a long bar of exposed window high above her head. The purple shag carpet had been ripped out to the subflooring. Someone had burned the mattress to its coils and there was a charred hole in the ceiling above it. In the closet, the cutout of Dolly Parton, now battered and defiled. A camping lantern cast a small artificial light on the far side of the room. There perched on the giant purple bathtub sat Charlie, her thin legs folded over the edge. Dressed in a striped shirt and starchy new jeans, she looked like a willowy version of young Kit. Manny, seated next to her, had his fingers in her hair, like he was sussing out the tangles. At his feet was Kit’s shotgun.