The waitress let her head dip. “They don’t want any pie. I’ll bring you some more hot water, hon. And a new tea bag. That looks awful.”
I needed to get back on the road. My phone said it was almost three in the morning. The phone got service here, so I could tell I had no messages, no texts, no news. But I stayed, watching Mary Jo refill the truckers’ coffee cups and recite from memory what the men wanted to hear. I stayed and waited for the hot water and new tea bag I didn’t really want, not knowing why I stayed but knowing that it was universal. Everybody who comes in comes lonely.
Blueberry, rhubarb, Dutch apple, cherry, and when Mary Jo brought me a slice without asking which flavor, I picked up my fork and took huge, gulping bites as though it had been months, had been forever, since I’d tasted anything so sweet.
I WOKE ANGRY, my head at an odd angle and my shoulder wedged against the steering wheel. A car horn blared. I jerked upright and the horn cut out, the silence left behind strange. I was parked in a rest area I barely remembered stopping for, and the horn had been my own.
I crawled out of the truck and stretched. After the truck stop, I had lasted only another couple of hours before my lack of sleep had caught up with me. I had a lot of miles left to cover, twisting roads better attacked in daylight. Now my neck was stiff and my head cried out for caffeine and aspirin. Two other cars were parked at the other end of the lot, a few tractor-trailers at ease in their area. I rubbed at my face and arms, walking quickly to the restrooms past the raised-fist map of my home state.
A few minutes later, I was hurrying back to the truck, guzzling a Coke and shoving a candy bar in my pocket when I realized I’d attracted someone’s attention. A police officer peered into the passenger window of the SUV.
“Good morning,” I said. I’d found aspirin in the vending machine and had all the hope in the world that relief would kick in any second. I could still be in Sweetheart Lake by noon. “There a problem?”
He straightened and held me in his gaze. “Report of a vagrant.”
“Is he in my car?”
“Can I ask where you’re traveling, ma’am?”
I supposed no was the wrong answer. “Just on vacation.”
“No particular destination, then?”
Something about his tone struck me as off-tune. I glanced toward the other cars in the lot, hoping someone else was awake. I couldn’t end up a televised true crime mystery, not after all this effort. “Visiting relatives. I haven’t seen any vagrant, but I haven’t been here that long.”
“Not too long? Not several hours, and honking your horn for the last two minutes?”
I turned my head to look at the other two cars more closely. One was an open-bed truck marked but unreadable—Department of Transportation, probably. The other was dark, unmarked. “Am I the vagrant?”
The trooper walked around the back of my car, made a show of checking the license plates against a notepad he pulled out of his pocket. I imagined his handwriting: short, squat blocks of letters marching across the page. “Not if you get in your car and get moving.”
“That was the plan,” I said. He didn’t move. I took another sip of my cola.
“Are you Anna Winger?”
A dribble of cola went down my windpipe. I choked, nodding my head. My hand reached toward him. Joshua, oh, God. Joshua. “Is it—my son?”
The trooper stared off toward the ramp back to the highway as though the answer he had to give troubled him. I began to shiver. I’d been riding the right lane all the way, looking for anyone hitchhiking. At overpasses, I slowed and searched the dark reaches, and once I’d seen a pair of shoes up high in the underbelly of a viaduct. It was dark, the road blank, but I stopped and rolled down the window. When no one answered, I turned on the blinkers, got out. But just a few feet closer to the shoes, I could tell that no one was wearing them. The shoes were lined up, left behind, the sort of thing I had to discard before I started assigning meaning.
The trooper sighed and finally looked me in the eye. “Not sure. Got a message, says you’re to call in. Parks County, Indiana?”
“You mean the sheriff? Sheriff Russell Keller. How—?”
“Reported you missing.”
I waited for a punchline, but none seemed likely. “Missing? But my neighbor—I said—”
“ATL on your plates. Attempt to Locate. You’re free to go, but I got to call it in.”
I was caught between anger and astonishment. Some sort of alert on my vehicle? Was that even legal? Was that even—ethical? What the—was this the game now? When I left his jurisdiction, I had to check out? As if Ray weren’t enough, now I had to flee someone who could have me trailed by proxy across state lines, while he was serving the community, handing out handshakes and medallions?
“He would go to a lot of trouble to keep tabs on me.”
“Ma’am?”
“What am I supposed to do?” I said.
“You’re to call this number.” He ripped a half sheet from his notepad and walked it to me.
Up close the trooper seemed a lot younger than I’d taken him for. He was freshly shaven and the collar of his shirt didn’t quite fit. I glanced down at the paper in his hand and could read the digits there, just as squat and thick as I’d predicted. I should tell the kiddie cop a few things about himself, shake his faith a bit. But that would take time I didn’t have. I dug the keys out of my pocket.
“Ma’am? Please take this.”
“What does it matter? I’m not missing. I may never be missing again.” They were wasting my time. “Besides, I know that number if I need it.”
I DROVE FOR hours before the road finally split and veered into pines. I rolled down the windows, breathing deeply, taking them in. In all the places I’d been since, I hadn’t found anywhere that smelled just this way. Maybe I’d chosen all those prairie towns to make sure we’d never settle in, that we’d never find it hard to leave again.
I was getting close, and nervous. An hour or so still before I reached Sweetheart, I drove into a little town that seemed familiar. This old house with the big rock outside and all the flowerpots. That little church.
A new gas station stood where something else used to be. I pulled in, filled the tank. Inside the station, I bought a bottle of aspirin and another cola and tried not to look too closely at the guy at the register. I was close enough to Sweetheart now that I might start to recognize faces. Or they might start to recognize me.
Outside, I held the door for a woman coming in. She paused. “Riverview High?”
I looked up. I’d gone to Riverview, but not with this woman, surely. She was older by at least twenty-five years, her eyes sinking deep into round cheeks.