Gany pulled the Caddy onto the shoulder of the wooded highway. The moment the car stopped, Ellie was out the door and hurrying into the trees. She got only about five yards before she bent forward and vomited in the grass.
David got out of the car and joined his daughter. When he reached her, she had finished retching, but remained bent forward, hands on her knees, staring off at the dark, intersecting branches of the trees. David rubbed her back. He didn’t say anything.
“I’m sorry,” Ellie said. Then she spit on the ground several times.
“Feel better?”
“I guess so.” She turned her head and looked up at him. Her face was beet red, her eyes bleary. A trail of saliva hung from her chin. “It was a lot to take in.”
“I guess it was. Were you trying to save her life?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t know what I was trying to do. But she died, anyway.”
“Yes,” David said, still rubbing her back. “But much more peacefully than she would have, I think.”
“I took it all out of her and helped her get over,” Ellie said.
“It was very brave,” he said. “Very stupid, but very brave.”
She began to cry.
“Aw, hon. Come here.” He hugged her tight. “It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice muffled against his chest.
“Shhh,” he told her, squeezing her more tightly. He looked back toward the Caddy and saw Gany standing outside, leaning against the hood and smoking a cigarette. Watching them.
“What are we gonna say to her?” Ellie said. She was looking at Gany now, too.
“I’ll handle it. You okay to go? Feel better?”
Swiping the tears from her face, Ellie nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s roll.”
When they got back in the car, David expected Gany to hit them with a barrage of questions. But to his astonishment, she said nothing. Not a word. It made him uncomfortable, so he cleared his throat and proceeded to fumble through some sort of explanation that was somewhere between a half truth and a complete fabrication.
“Hey,” Gany said, interrupting him. “Listen, man. You guys don’t owe me an explanation. As far as I’m concerned, your girl back there’s got a big heart and was trying to help someone in need. We can leave it at that.”
“All right,” David agreed. “Let’s leave it at that.”
In the backseat, Ellie fell quickly asleep.
*
By the time Gany left the highway and pulled onto a narrow ribbon of blacktop that wound through acres of bare-branched forest, Ellie was awake again. She stared out at the trees, not talking. All conversation had pretty much died after the highway incident.
“This place is a retired chicken farm,” Gany said as she navigated the unwieldy Cadillac along the serpentine twist of roadway. “Tim’s been out here for about a year, I guess. Previous owners sold it to him for a song. Not much use for a chicken farm when there aren’t any more chickens.”
“What exactly does he do out here?”
“Whatever he wants,” Gany said. “He’s always been a bit of a recluse, only now it’s trendy.”
“But what does he do for money? Does he have a job?”
She looked at him. “You guys are brothers, right?”
“Well, stepbrothers. We haven’t spoken in a long time.”
“So, are you one of those guys who only reappears when he needs something?”
The question jarred him. About a million responses shuttled through his brain, but none of them seemed adequate enough. He opened his mouth to speak, but Gany cut him off.
“I’m just screwing with you, man,” she said, smiling at him. She had a bit of an Elvis curl to her upper lip.
“I just don’t want to get him in trouble,” he said. Then added, “Or you.”
“Tim’s no dummy. He looks before he leaps.” She glanced sidelong at him. “I’m no dummy, either.”
After about ten minutes, the blacktop gave way to packed earth. The trees crowded in closer to the car, and a few bare branches reached out and scraped twiggy fingers along the Caddy’s roof. David got the sense that they were driving gradually uphill the whole way.
The dirt road eventually emptied out onto a small sunlit glen, at the center of which was the farmhouse. It was comprised of natural, untreated wood, with a slouching cantilevered roof, green and furry with moss. A series of antennas jutted straight up from the center of the roof, forming a semicircle around a satellite dish. Running the length of the house was a wraparound porch that sagged beneath a shingled alcove. The windows were all shuttered, and there were NO TRESPASSING signs posted to the trees every few yards. A silver Tahoe was parked around one side of the house, decorated in splatters of mud.
“A deer,” Ellie said. “See it?”
David looked and saw a large doe standing motionless among the foliage to one side of the house.
“It’s a fake,” Gany said. “A phony.”
Ellie said, “Huh?”
“It’s made of rubber. There’s a camera in its head. Wave, gang. We’re on CCTV.” Gany stuck her arm out the window and waved to the deer. The deer’s head swiveled mechanically, following the vehicle’s progress around the side of the house.