His game system was still in county evidence, but I packed his new headphones, carefully wrapping the cords and tucking them into a corner of the cargo area behind the backseats.
I packed until I was exhausted, almost midnight. Everything felt as though I were doing it for the last time. Maybe I was washing my hands in this sink for the last time. Maybe I was closing this door for the last time and descending these steps for the last time. But there would be other sinks, other doors, other steps. That was not how it felt. So little of my old life offered itself up to be taken along, I felt as though I were packing for my own execution. I packed for the trip, but not for what came after. I couldn’t imagine what might come after.
At the bottom of the stairs, Margaret’s door opened. I saw the glint of her glasses in the dark crack, gave a nod, and tried to slip past.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Nowhere, Margaret, don’t worry.”
“That’s bull, lady. I know bull when I see it.”
I glanced toward the back door, propped open for my last trip through. “Seems like you already know it all.”
“What’m I supposed to tell that police when he comes to check on you?”
“He won’t.”
“What did you tell him?” she said.
“Margaret, I need to get on the road.”
“Nothing? Slip out of town like you came in. You don’t know a thing.”
Agreement rose to my lips, but I swallowed it.
“Tell me, then,” she said. “Just in case.”
I had thought of this—so many just-in-cases. But I hadn’t taken care of any of them. I’d never left a forwarding address, never told anyone where I came from, where I was going. Why start now? Joshua. What if the police found him on his way to Sweetheart Lake and brought him back? What if he changed his mind halfway there and came back on his own?
But if I believed that, I’d be waiting here forever.
“Home,” I said. The word caught in my throat. Whenever I thought of home, I thought of dusk and mosquito bites, the lake like a photo on a wall calendar I took for granted. The trees hulking over the houses, gods waiting to pass judgment. Red dirt in my socks and the smell of burgers from the Dairy Bar drifting out into the night. I thought of rental house after rental house, all dumps, and the sad bucket of yellow paint always stacked in the basement. “Home. Joshua’s gone home, and I have to go get him.”
Margaret opened the door wider, her worn slippers appearing over the threshold. She turned her bad ear toward me. “And where is that?”
“I’ll call the sheriff’s office from the road.”
Margaret reached out to stop me, but I slipped past and out the back. The SUV didn’t seem loaded for a new life. The far back was full and covered, but otherwise I might be taking a Sunday drive or running an errand. I got inside, buckled in. The sounds of the night came through the open window. After a moment, I started the engine and rolled out into the street.
A mistake, leaving so much behind, leaving the spot that Joshua knew to return to. By the time I had driven through town and past the courthouse, seen the disk of light from the lamp against the closed blinds of the sheriff’s office, passed the neon of the Dairy Bar, and took the exit north, I had begun to believe that every move I made from here on out would be the wrong one.
The road was dark even lit by the half-moon, uncluttered by other drivers. I drove just a little fast. To keep my mind where it needed to be, I began to note every county marker I passed, every sign to towns I wouldn’t be visiting. I was in the lull between one city and the next, just fast-food billboards and the occasional cluster of lights. But this was the way: north, only north and toward every mistake I had ever made.
“WHERE YOU HEADED?”
I looked up from the cup of tea, still full and long gone cold, and found the source of the question through bleary eyes. The waitress, swinging a coffeepot from her wide hip as though it were an appendage. She wore a stained uniform and broken-down sneakers. How many hours did this woman spend awake when everyone else was asleep?
I was in a truck stop in the middle of the night on the bypass around Chicago, and no one was here because it was where he wanted to be. I didn’t want to be here, either. After several hours of the gray ribbon of the interstate, my sleepless night had caught up with me. I was hoping a little pick-me-up would get me through the city and through the night.
“Home,” I said.
“Ah, yeah? Where you from, sugar?” She slid into the other side of my booth and set the coffeepot down on a napkin. “You don’t mind, do you? I don’t have enough to keep me busy, but every time I look like I got nothing to do, those dudes”—she jerked her head over her shoulder at a couple of truckers, the only other customers—“decide they need to hear the pies again.”
Earlier the truckers had been arguing amiably about who’d seen the worst pile-up in their careers. As far as I was concerned, they’d tied. I had been trying to shut them out. I had a lot of miles left to cover. Dark miles on bare, two-lane state roads.
They were doughy men of that age just shy of old. “They’re lonely.”
“Everybody who comes in comes lonely. They were each one lonelier an hour ago.”
“They didn’t come in together?”
“They found true old-fart love right here at the Quick-Stop, honey. Love to hear themselves talk, I mean,” she said. Her nametag said Mary Jo. “What’re you going to do when you get home?”
“Pick up my son,” I said. “He’s—visiting his father.”
“I hate those visits. You drop them off as well raised as they’re liable to get, and then you pick them up and they’re an inch taller and full of shit. It takes six weeks to scrub the taint off them. You just got the one?”
I nodded.
“My boys, when they go down to visit their dad and his mom and dad and his brother and that guy’s little band of assholes, they come back sounding like they’ve been to jerk camp. Be lucky you only got the one. He can’t gang up on you.”
The truckers exploded into laughter. I looked over at them but Mary Jo wasn’t bothered.
“When they sit separate, they all want to talk to me.” She fluttered her hand in the direction of the other booth. “They sit together, and they’re just little boys. They’re all the same.”
I lifted the tea to my mouth to keep from having to answer. I’d met plenty of men to prove Mary Jo’s theory, but I couldn’t believe it applied to all men. What about Joshua? As much as the last few days had staggered me, I wouldn’t believe it. I hadn’t kept him from every danger, but I had to think that he was still—possible. Joshua was still a possibility.
“Mary Jo,” said one of the truckers. “Can we hear the pie list again?”