“I know it,” he said. “We’ll sort it all out.” His voice was soothing and calm. “Let him out of these cuffs,” he told somebody else.
My hands were released. I pushed up to my knees. I was covered in a solid inch of mud from ankle to shoulder.
“I want to go with her,” I said.
“Not the way you’re looking right now,” Don said. “Get yourself cleaned up. I’ll call your mama and you can meet her up at Erlanger.”
“Why are they taking her all the way there?”
“She’s under eighteen. That’s where pediatric cases go.” He walked me over to his squad car. “Looks to me like you need a driver. You got somebody here to take you or you want to ride with me?”
I squinted my eyes in the glare of the headlights to find Barbie. I spotted her, over by Carl’s truck, hanging on to his arm. Great. So that was going on right now, it seemed. I didn’t have the time to even wonder why she hadn’t bothered to break it off with me. It didn’t matter. I was done with all of them.
“I’ll take him,” Redmond said.
Don sized him up for a second. “How much you had to drink?”
“I skipped the whiskey. I’m all right.”
Don nodded. “Take him home, get him cleaned up. Then to Erlanger.” He turned away.
The ambulance started bumping across the rough terrain of the muddy field. I winced with every bounce of the wheels. Hannah was in there, but at that moment, as bad as it seemed, I felt like she’d be okay. I thought I’d go and see her and find her lying in white sheets, a bandage on her head, complaining about how long it would be before she got home.
I was wrong.
Chapter 46: Chance
Jenny hadn’t eaten much of anything, and now the food was all cold. I reached across and grabbed a bit of toast and showed it to her. “That waitress is gonna blame me if you don’t eat this.”
She turned her face toward my arm a moment, like she was going to refuse, then shifted away. She took the bread from me and took a bite.
There didn’t seem to be much else to say. She knew the worst thing about me. Maybe now that she knew, she wouldn’t want me around the baby at all.
“I’m kind of no good,” I said. “You might be better off with nothing but a support check from cross country.”
She set the crust of her toast on the plate. “Please don’t say that. It’s not your fault this happened.”
“I was the one out there drinking and acting stupid. She came out there because of me.”
“Why DID she go out there? For one, why did she show up at all? For two, why did she drive into the field and not stay with the friends?”
These were questions that had bothered me for half a year. “She found out from my mother that we were out there. Mom sent her to save my soul from eternal damnation over the evils of drinking. She used to come herself. When Hannah got old enough to drive, she started sending her. Probably in hopes that Hannah wouldn’t turn out just as wild.”
“Was Hannah like her? Religious and stuff?”
“Yes and no. She was Mom’s perfect little church girl. But she had her own life aside from that. She just wanted to please Mom in a way I never cared about.”
“Sounds like she was a lovely girl.”
“I don’t know what to do about her. Lying there like that was just about her worst nightmare. I know this. Mother knows this. I don’t know why she lets it go on and on.”
“Maybe she’s just like you,” I said. “And me. Unable to let her go.”
I hadn’t realized this might be the thing Mom and I had in common. That she was just hiding it under the Bible.
The waitress stopped by and frowned at Jenny’s plate. “Poor little mite.”
She seemed to finally notice I hadn’t ordered. “Two eggs, bacon, ham, and toast?” she asked me.
“That sounds fine. Over easy.”
The waitress nodded. “I couldn’t bring anything that might smell up the table and upset her stomach,” she said.
Huh. That actually made sense.
Jenny laughed a little. “I don’t know nothin’ about birthin’ no babies.”
“I guess we’ll figure it out together,” I told her.
The waitress smiled. “That’s all any of us do.”
Jenny stayed close against me as we finished out the breakfast. I liked the feel of her next to me. Sometimes I thought about her belly, and what was swimming in there.
One thing I knew for sure. It was time to grow the hell up.
Chapter 47: Jenny
Chance drove me around Chattanooga for the day, showing me the river running through the city and some of the parks along the shore. We had lunch at a sandwich shop, much easier for me to manage without all the intense smells of a restaurant with hot food, and talked about our pasts.