“It’s pretty out that way,” Genevieve said.
“It can be. Not so much on our stretch of road.”
“So how old are you, anyway, Claire?”
“Almost thirty-five now. Is that the question you wanted to ask?”
“No. Or partly, I guess. So you were sixteen when you went to that campground. And now you’re thirty-four. So you said it was fifteen years since you talked to your father, which means you were eighteen or nineteen the last time. Only three years after the time on the river with those other kids.”
“That’s right. Nineteen. Good math.” She was amazed, a little, at Genevieve’s quick and extraordinary grasp of detail.
“So what happened between nineteen and thirty-four? I mean, I know you had Lucy. What’s your husband’s name?”
“Jack.”
“And you married Jack. But he probably came later, right?”
“I was in Nebraska when I met him. We had Lucy just a year later.”
“Okay, so how’d you get to Nebraska? What happened between nineteen and Nebraska?”
“I—” She realized she was about to say “I don’t know,” which seemed somehow accurate, given how out of the habit she was of thinking of those years.
“Because if you stopped talking to your mom and dad for all that time, it must have been something interesting.”
“I didn’t tell you I stopped talking to my mom.”
“But you did, didn’t you?”
Anyone she ever told about it found this least forgivable. She’d stopped speaking of it entirely, and when a motel guest saw Lucy come around the front desk, and said something like, “What a doll! Her grandma must be tickled,” Claire would nod and say, “She is.”
For a few seconds, she let the sound of the tires on the highway become her answer.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Genevieve said.
“I don’t know. That’s not what most people think.” The words came tumbling out. “You asked me what I was doing before Jack. Well, I had a few problems. The biggest one was drinking. But I don’t want you to think”—she wasn’t sure why she suddenly cared what this woman thought of her—“that the drinking was the reason I stopped talking to my mother and father. It wasn’t like that. God, I remember one night waking up next to a man. I lifted my head off the pillow, you know, and I didn’t know where I was, and I had to stare at his face for, like, a full minute while he slept before I could vaguely remember him from the night before. He had his shirt off, and I could see the tracks in his arms. Say what you want, but I never did heroin. Maybe everything else, but not that. He woke up while I was looking at him, and he sat up in bed right away, with his back to me. It was obvious he didn’t remember me, either. The first thing he said was, ‘Better call Mom to pick you up.’ Maybe he thought I was under eighteen, and that’s why he wouldn’t look at me. So I said to him, probably because I was angry, ‘I haven’t spoken to my mother in five years.’ And that’s when he turns and looks over his shoulder. Gives me what amounted to a long glance. And he says, ‘What the fuck’s wrong with you?’ He’s sitting there with tracks in his arms next to a hungover girl he can barely recognize from the night before, and he’s asking me that.”
In the middle of her story, Genevieve had turned her gray eyes on her.
“So don’t tell me it’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Claire said. “The whole fucking world thinks it is.”
She was surprised at her anger and the tightening of her throat.
“If Lucy ever did that to me—” But she stopped there.
The right tire caught the shoulder, and she steered back toward the centerline.
“Sorry,” Claire said.
“But you said you named Lucy after your mom’s mother.”
“I did. I know I did.”
“So you’ll be seeing your mother for the first time in fifteen years, too?”
“I was almost killed,” Claire said.
“What?”
“Nothing. Nothing. Yes, fifteen years. But I talked to her on the phone before I left California. She bawled her head off. But she was still proud.”
“Proud of what? Being abandoned?”
She looked over at Genevieve, and then wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Yeah. I guess that’s a good way to put it.”
“It’s a deeper kind of pride than if she came out here and glowed while she watched Lucy stacking blocks.”
“Why do you think that?”
But this, Genevieve didn’t answer. Ahead in the road, emerging from the illusion of reflection on the pavement, was a crow perched over some carrion. It flew up and cawed as they approached. The woman was strange, and maybe fascinating. Claire reminded herself that she’d robbed the gas station.
“Do you think your father will be proud, too, in that way, when he sees you?” Genevieve asked.
“I don’t know. If he’s conscious, maybe. I doubt it.”
“He probably fell in love.”
She shook her head and smiled.
“Genevieve, how would you know that?”
“The woman who called you. I bet that’s his wife. Or his longtime lover. Did she say anything?”