Melanie waited until Hope was squirming around the backseat before she shoved the both of them into their jackets and flung open the back door away from the road. Not that it mattered, no one had passed in the forty minutes they’d been sitting there.
One foot outside the car and Melanie was up to her ankles in wet muck. A marsh more than a puddle sat right outside the door.
She reached for her daughter and did her best to lift her away from the majority of the gunk. “We don’t want to leave the car, Hope. You’re going to have to pee here.”
Hope squished her nose and looked as if she was about to object.
The rain that was coming down in steady sheets picked up speed and Hope reached for her jeans.
Melanie held Hope’s arm to keep her from falling and waited. A blast of cold air had her teeth chattering.
She was about to encourage Hope to hurry when she stood upright and pulled up her pants. Rather than walking through the mud a second time, Melanie directed her daughter around the back of the car and helped her into the backseat.
Instead of popping in beside her, Melanie moved to the driver’s seat and opened the trunk. They’d both have to change into dry clothes or spend their first week in River Bend sick with the flu.
“Damn rain,” she said once Hope was out of earshot.
She tossed Hope’s smaller case into the front seat and went back for the second when light flittered across the trees above her car. For a brief second she thought it was lightning, then the sound of an engine met with the lights.
Melanie dropped her suitcase beside her when a twin cab, long bed truck took the corner a little fast.
She shielded her eyes from the light with one hand and waved with the other. “Please stop,” she whispered to herself. And don’t be an ax murderer.
Her heart kicked hard when the truck splashed up a puddle in the middle of the street, spraying her already soaked frame to the bone. Just when she was sure the driver of the truck was going to pass her by, she heard a screech of brakes, and the red taillights filled the dark night.
“Thank God.”
The words no sooner left her lips than the truck gunned in reverse and did a thorough job of ensuring not one inch of her was dry.
The tall frame of a man stepped out and peered at her from over the bed of the truck.
“I-I think you missed a spot,” Melanie chattered.
“What the hell are you doing standing on the side of the road in the rain?” The stranger was actually yelling at her.
She couldn’t see his features under the hood of his coat . . . she glimpsed a bit of facial hair from the light inside the cab, but she couldn’t tell if it was I’m a mountain man hermit who chops up body parts of stranded women and children hair or a fashion statement.
“I’m enjoying a walk,” she yelled back.
“What?”
Melanie shook her head. “My car broke down.”
Just then, Hope opened the back door.
“Mommy?”
“Get back in the car, Hope.”
“Do we have a ride to town?”
Melanie shot a look at the stranger. “Get back in the car.”
“But . . .”
“Hope!” She used her Mom voice and her daughter closed the back door.
She thought she saw the flash of the stranger’s teeth. The dark hid his eyes and didn’t give her any hint about their safety with the man.
“Listen, lady . . . I can give you and your daughter a ride into town. It’s not very far.”
Melanie wrapped her arms around herself and attempted to hold in a full body shiver. “Uhm . . . yeah . . . but you could be a parolee from Sing Sing.”
The man laughed. “A parolee wouldn’t have stopped.”
Maybe.
“I-I’d feel better if you’d send a tow truck after me once you got into town.”
“You want me to leave you out here?”
She shivered again. “A tow truck is closer than Sing Sing. I’d appreciate the call,” she told him.
The man shifted his head toward the road, then back to her and her broken-down car. “Suit yourself.” With that, he jumped back into the cab of his truck and started to drive away.
He got as far as a few yards before pulling off to the side of the road and turning on his hazard lights.
She wasn’t sure what the man was up to, but she didn’t see the point of standing in the rain any longer to figure him out.
With her suitcase back in the trunk, she crawled in beside her daughter and closed the wind outside. Reaching over Hope, she locked the door and swiped her wet hand across the window to keep watch on the truck . . . or more importantly, the stranger inside.
“Is he calling for help?” Hope asked.
“I think so.”
Melanie kept one eye out the window and fished a dry sweatshirt and leggings from her daughter’s clothes. One layer at a time, she managed to help her little girl into dryer clothing, shivering the whole time.
She was tossing wet clothing onto the floor of the front seat when a fist knocked on her window.