“Oh,” Allie said again. Then a pause fell. And stayed for a beat too long. Allie knew they both must have heard and felt the hesitation. Lying was not in Allie’s wheelhouse. “I didn’t bring enough stuff to the group home. So my social worker brought me over here to get more.”
Allie expected Mrs. Deary to look around in an attempt to locate this mythical social worker. She didn’t. She was a small woman in a big, loose print housedress, like something from the fifties, with half-glasses stored on the crown of her head. She stared deeply into Allie’s eyes as if reading a treasure map.
“I heard you ran away.”
A cold river ran down Allie’s throat and spread through her belly and gut. Down her thighs.
“Where did you hear that?” she asked, wondering if her voice was shaking. It felt as though it was.
“Somebody called me. Somebody from social services. They wanted to know if I’d seen you. If you’d come back to the house. They left me with a number to call in case I saw you.”
The more words came out of Mrs. Deary’s mouth, the more her forehead wrinkled with the intense gravity of the subject.
“That’s all over now,” Allie said, surprised that lying flowed so easily. “There was this girl there who threatened me, so I stayed away for a day. But I went back. They should have called you again and told you I was back.”
“Yes.” Mrs. Deary arched one eyebrow slightly. “They should have.”
A movement caught Allie’s eye. She turned to see the bakery van pulling around the corner. She dropped her bags and windmilled her arms to signal Bea. The pool raft hit the grass again.
“They have a pool at this group home?” Mrs. Deary asked.
“No, just lousy mattresses,” Allie said, fast and desperate. “Here’s my social worker now. Gotta go!”
She scooped up the dropped items and sprinted for the street.
“That’s your social worker?” her neighbor called after her. “Why is she driving an old bakery van?”
“Her car broke down,” Allie shot over her shoulder. “She just borrowed this. Normally she drives a Prius.”
She pulled the passenger door of the van open and threw the bag of clothes and the pool raft around the seat and into the back. Then she climbed in with the bag of electronics carefully clutched in her lap.
“Drive,” Allie said. “Drive.”
“Who was that?” Bea asked, stepping on the gas.
“A problem,” Allie said, staring at her neighbor in the side-view mirror.
Mrs. Deary stared back. She was standing in the middle of the street, watching the van drive away. As if memorizing the license number. But maybe Allie was reading that in. After all, you can’t know what’s happening inside a person while they stare. You can only imagine. And imagination can be a highly fear-based phenomenon.
“Neighbor?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s the problem?”
“She said she had a number that somebody at social services gave her. In case she saw me.”
“Hmm. Think she’ll call them?”
“I have no idea,” Allie said, trying to breathe normally. Then, when she should have left well enough alone, she added, “But I have a bad feeling about it.”
Bea swung the van around a corner and the troublesome neighbor disappeared from view.
“A Prius?” Allie asked out loud.
She tried to remember if Polyester Lady drove a Prius. Maybe that was where the idea had come from. No. As best Allie could remember, her actual social worker drove something American and big.
“What about a Prius?” Bea asked.
“I don’t know. It’s just weird. I started lying because . . . well, I had to. Or I guess I felt like I had to. And then the lies got kind of . . . specific. And I don’t know where all those details came from.”
“I won’t even point out the lesson there.”
“Thank you.”
They drove for a mile or two in silence.
“I just didn’t want to go to jail,” Allie said. “Or . . . you know. Juvie. I think that sounds like the worst thing ever.”
“I don’t think so. I’m not sure it sounds bad at all. I’ve considered it. It wouldn’t be hard to get into a place like that. Just walk into a police station and own up to some of the things I’ve done.”
“Why? Why would you want that?”
“A roof over my head and three square meals a day.”
“What about your cat? Phyllis?”
“I heard somewhere that the pound has to hold them for you until you get out.”
“She’s so old, though.”
“I know. But still. When you think you can’t provide for yourself and your cat . . . it changes your thinking. About . . . you know. What’s safe. What’s desirable. That bottom line of food and shelter starts to look like the only thing that matters. I guess it always was the only thing that mattered, only we didn’t know it, because we thought a thing like this couldn’t happen to us. Those were the good old days, huh?”
Allie opened her mouth to answer. All that came out was a sigh.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Nobody Takes My Ancient, Peeling Lettering
Allie circled the van, plotting and planning.
It sat parked in the dirt somewhere between the Cayucos pier and quaint little Highway 1. In other words, they had made it almost as far up the coast as they had the first time. Maybe twenty miles south of zebra territory. And they hadn’t been stopped and arrested. But somehow Allie didn’t expect that luck to hold.
“We could peel off a lot of the lettering,” she said to Bea, who had recently stepped out to see what Allie was up to. “A lot of it has peeled off already, at least at the edges. Or we could get some white spray paint and paint over them.”
“No,” Bea said, simply.
“Why not?”
“Well, first of all, if that nosy neighbor of yours wrote down the license number, it won’t help much.”
“But we don’t know if she did or not. And besides, even if she did. You have to be driving right behind a van to read its license plate. But if she just called in a description of the van, I mean . . . seriously, this thing is not hard to pick out of a crowd. It’s fairly . . . unusual looking.”
“And then there’s the second reason.”
“Which is?”
“I won’t let you.”
“Oh.” Allie opened her mouth to say more, but then opted to leave it at that. She sensed she should stop talking, for reasons she did not poke or prod or otherwise deeply examine.
“This is my husband Herbert’s van. Herbert is gone now. How much of him do you think I have left? What do you think I own as evidence that he once existed? Our little trailer is gone. I have a couple of cartons of things I left with a friend in Palm Desert. I have no idea when I’ll see them again. Other than that, I have this van he used in his bakery business. It’s really the only thing I have that’s left over from our life together. And I did not invite you to paint over its lettering so no one will notice that you ran away from some kind of a home and you’re traveling with me. So the bottom line is that you won’t be making any changes to my van. Did I make myself sufficiently clear about that?”