“That’s a nice offer. Thanks. I’d like to take some for her. I’m a vegan.”
It didn’t feel as though it mattered, though, anyway, whether Allie ate. The depression had left her with no appetite.
“I have biscuits and coleslaw and three-bean salad.”
“That would be good, thanks.”
Because turning down free food seemed impossibly stupid, whether you were immediately hungry for it or not.
Just for a moment—just as Allie was walking out the door with her brown paper bags of food—it struck her that maybe she should try to stay. That the store owner would be a better bet than Bea. She lived in a real house, and felt at home in her own skin. She acted like it was good news to see Allie a second time.
Allie shook the idea away again.
She had no doubt this woman would help if Allie asked her to. But it would be the wrong kind of help. It would involve digging down to the truth. Notifying the proper authorities.
It would be that responsible kind of help that Allie could no longer afford.
“So . . . I was thinking . . . ,” Allie said to Bea, who looked three-quarters asleep. The old woman had finished all five pieces of the fried chicken. It had been an amazing thing to witness. Meanwhile Allie had only stared limply at her biscuits and coleslaw and three-bean salad. “Maybe we could go up to that campground at San Simeon State Park. It costs about twenty dollars. But I have money. And I could take a shower there.”
“I’m not moving,” Bea said, and her lips barely moved as she said it. “I’m not driving another three feet. I can’t drive as far as I did today. It’s exhausting. My whole body is fairly buzzing with exhaustion. And my neck and shoulders hurt terribly. From now on four or five hours and that’s it. Besides. We have money. It’s not so much your money at this point. You committed it in return for the ride. So we make any decisions about how to spend it together.”
Allie sighed.
She carefully moved the cat off her lap and began blowing up the flat bottom section of the pool raft. It made her feel painfully tired and out of breath.
By the time she had inflated it, Bea was snoring lightly.
Allie grabbed a towel and a washcloth from among Bea’s things. She hadn’t asked permission, but it seemed wrong to wake her up to ask. Besides, Allie’s money had to be affording her some kind of perks. She carefully chose a clean outfit from her other handwoven South American bag.
Then she walked two blocks to the big gas station on the corner near the highway.
There, in their women’s restroom, she attempted to cultivate the habit of the sponge bath. It was nothing like a shower, but it would have to do. Like so many aspects of her sudden new life, it seemed her only option was to adjust with as much good cheer as she could muster.
At the moment that cheer felt painfully small.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Flattery Will Get You Everywhere
They drove the high, winding, narrow ribbon of highway along the Big Sur coast. Allie gawked at the turquoise tinge of the ocean hundreds of feet below, with the jagged boulders at its edges, and the nearly vertical rock face that rose on the right, so close to the traffic lane that Allie occasionally thought it would scrape her side of the van.
Phyllis had been sitting on her lap, purring, but the constant twists and turns must have been making the cat carsick. She pinned her ears back along her head and slithered under the seat.
“Whoa!” Allie said, feeling and sounding like a kid. “Look at that bridge!”
A mile or so up the road the highway briefly morphed into a bridge with high steel arches of suspension underneath. To span what, Allie couldn’t see.
“I can’t look at that bridge!” Bea barked. It was the first Allie had realized Bea was not enjoying the scene with her. “I can’t look at anything. I have to look at the road in front of us so I don’t drive us right off the edge of a cliff to our untimely deaths.”
Before Bea could even finish the sentence the road performed an amazingly tight hairpin curve, turning directly away from the ocean, then bending at a wild angle to face it again. Allie watched Bea’s strained face for a moment. Then she looked around to take in the view.
That’s when she saw it. A cop car. Well, a cop SUV. It was four cars back, but it was following.
“Uh-oh,” Allie said.
“Uh-oh what? Don’t say uh-oh unless you mean it! I’m seeing enough cause for panic without your help!”
As she spoke, Bea instinctively braked. The van slowed to a crawl. The car behind them honked.
“Don’t stop!” Allie shouted.
“Well, you’re telling me there’s something wrong! I don’t know what it is yet!”
“It’s behind us. There’s a cop back there.”
Bea breathed in silence for a moment, and marginally accelerated. “What kind of cop? Sheriff? Highway Patrol?”
“I don’t know. It’s too far back to see what it says on the side. I just know it’s black and white and has a light bar on top.”
“Well, if it’s too far away for us to read the writing on it, maybe the reverse is true.”
“We need to find a place to pull off.”
“There’s no place to pull off!” Bea screeched. Then, seeming to achieve better control of her nerves—or at least her voice—she added, “In case you hadn’t noticed.”
Allie knew they had a potential problem, and that it would play out fast. Bea was driving far too slowly, holding up a line of cars behind them with her terror. Several posted signs had announced the law: slower traffic was required to use turnouts. Bea had driven right by the signs—and the turnouts—as if she hadn’t noticed them. If they failed to turn out at the next opportunity, in full view of the cop, that was a citation-worthy infraction. If Allie carefully instructed Bea to turn out, and she did, the cars behind them would pass. Including the cop car. Whose cop driver would then get a good look at the van as he drove by.
Allie glanced desperately over her shoulder, but they had rounded a curve that obscured all but the car directly behind them.
She looked forward again and saw a dirt driveway. It was on the ocean side, guarded by a tall, wide, and ornate wrought iron gate. As luck would have it, the gate was standing open.
“Pull in here!” Allie shrieked.
Bea jumped, and the nose of the van swerved with her panic, but she did as she was told—even though it involved pulling across the southbound traffic lane at a blind curve. She just dove in and did it, and nobody came around the curve driving south.
The driveway led sharply downhill, and the van picked up speed and bounced violently on the rutted dirt.
“I’m not sure I have the suspension for—” Bea began. But the road got rougher, and Bea had to give all her attention to braking to a full stop.
Allie craned her neck to look back at the road. It was gone. The road was out of view from their current location. And, thankfully, they were out of view of the road.