“Okay, you’ll be happy,” Allie said as she jumped back into the van.
Bea started the engine and began to drive again, not even waiting to hear what would bring such happiness. Because she wanted miles. She wanted to get closer to Cape Flattery, and the goal.
“How much did he give you? I know it can’t be more than what we talked about. He has to resell it at some profit. He’s in the business. So he’ll always give you a little less than the spot price.”
“I got more than sixteen hundred dollars!”
Bea’s head spun a little as she absorbed that number. It was such a familiar figure—almost exactly what had been stolen from her bank account.
“And . . . ,” the girl continued. She dug into her jeans pocket. “I got you this.”
Allie held something out in Bea’s direction. Something small, that must have fit neatly into her hand, because all Bea could see was the hand. Bea held her own hand out, palm up, and the girl dropped something into it. A coin. Maybe the size of a quarter, or a little smaller.
Bea glanced in her rearview mirror. No one was coming up behind. She pulled slightly right and slowed to a crawl. She looked down into her palm. In it was a small gold American Eagle coin.
“I got us each one,” Allie said. Bea raised her eyes to see the girl’s face lit up in a genuine grin. “They’re a quarter ounce of gold each. You know. In case of emergency. We’ll each have one.”
“Explain the math to me,” Bea said, glancing in her rearview mirror and realizing she had better drive again. “You go in with an ounce of gold. You come out with two quarter ounces of gold and over sixteen hundred dollars. How does that happen?”
“He buys coins, too. So I sold him my grandfather’s coin collection. I had no idea what it was worth. But now we know, right? It was worth plenty!”
Bea drove in silence for several minutes, shifting the landscape of emotion in her belly. Or maybe it was shifting her.
“You’re a very thoughtful girl,” she said, eventually.
After a moment or two of no reply, Bea stole a glance at the girl’s face. Allie looked about ten percent gratified and ninety percent astonished.
They stood side by side at a Laundromat somewhere in Oregon. In some small town on the Oregon coast, after dark, after a beast of a long day on the road, folding their clean, dry laundry. It felt like a luxury, the warmth and cleanliness of the only clothes Bea owned. She wondered if it was a good thing or a bad thing to feel so much appreciation for something so small.
She leaned closer to the girl, her body language rife with conspiracy. She had a secret, Bea. And even though there was only one other woman in the Laundromat, and that person stood nowhere near, it was a secret that required discretion.
“I kissed Casper,” she whispered.
At first, nothing. No response. As though the girl hadn’t heard.
Then Allie squealed out a few words at a volume that made Bea jump. “Get outa town!”
It even made the other woman, who was reading a magazine near the door, jump. And she was a good twenty paces away.
“I don’t know what that means,” Bea said.
“It means . . . well . . . it’s kind of hard to translate.”
“And here I thought we were speaking approximately the same language.”
“It sort of means . . . you’re kidding!”
“I’m not kidding. And I won’t get out of town. Or however you answer that thing you just said.”
Bea braved a look at the girl’s face. It was wide open, unguarded. Exuberant, almost.
“You kissed him?” Allie asked, still a little too loudly.
“Yes. If you must know, yes. I’m not saying he didn’t kiss me back. But it was my idea.”
“What kind of kiss are we talking about here?”
Bea held a finger to her lips in warning. “I didn’t say I was willing to share details,” she hissed.
“Like a French kiss?” With an almost reverent emphasis on the key word.
“Of course not. Don’t be disgusting.”
“You don’t mean like a polite little peck on the cheek, do you?”
“If it was a polite little peck on the cheek, I wouldn’t even be telling you about it like it was something worth telling. That’s only the sort of kiss you get from your aunt.”
“That’s what I was going to say if you’d said yes. Only I would have said grandfather, because I never had an aunt. So . . . it was on the lips. But not just a quick little thing, right?”
Bea felt her face flush. “Please,” she whispered. “You’re embarrassing me.”
A long silence. Bea was almost done folding her clothes, and felt unsure of what to do with herself and her life when the folding was over.
“All right . . . Bea!” the girl shouted.
She punched Bea on the arm. Fairly hard.
“Ow!” Bea said, but still under her breath. “Why did you hit me?”
She rubbed the spot that had just been assaulted.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Was that too hard? It was just meant to be a friendly little thing. I do that with my friends all the time. It’s not supposed to hurt.”
The girl began to rub the spot Bea had just finished rubbing.
“I suppose it’s because they’re younger than I am,” Bea said.
A split second later she looked up to see the only other woman in the place standing directly in front of them, smiling. She was fortyish, with auburn hair spilling perfectly across her shoulders, and an old denim shirt.
“I just had to tell you this,” the woman said. “I hope you don’t mind. It’s so nice to see a grandmother and granddaughter who get along so well. Talking and laughing together. My kids barely speak to their grandparents.”
A long, stunned silence.
Then the girl said, “Um. Thank you?”
The woman turned and wandered outside.
“That was interesting,” Bea said.
“That was . . . bizarre,” the girl replied. “But nice.”
“Yes. Yes, I suppose. Nice.” Then, after a long pause, “Do you miss them?”
“Who?”
“Your friends.”
“Oh. That. I did. At first. Now I just feel like . . . I just think we wouldn’t have anything in common anymore. After everything I’ve gone through, how would we even fit together now? I think about them sometimes, and it’s like I knew them a couple of decades ago. Not a couple or three weeks. I guess that’s what happens when you get thrown out into life like this. It grows you up fast.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Bea said.
They lay quietly in the van together, Bea in her easy chair, the girl stretched out across that thing you floated around on in a pool. If you had a pool. They were camping in the Laundromat parking lot. Lying there in the dark, as if sleeping. But Bea knew that neither one of them was asleep. Bea could hear the roar of the surf, which felt comforting.
“Psst,” the girl hissed quietly.
“Yes,” Bea said. “I am indeed awake.”
“Why did we drive so far today?”
“I just want to get where we’re going.”
“But you said you get too tired. You said four or five hours, tops. We drove for almost nine hours.”