David turned and rushed out into the parking lot. His heart slammed in his chest as he hurried to the Bronco. It took several attempts to fit the key into the door, but he finally got it. He climbed behind the Bronco’s steering wheel, shoved the key into the ignition, cranked it. The Bronco roared to life.
Kathy’s face still hung before his eyes; he couldn’t blink it away. He sped through the opening in the facility’s front gate and drove in a blind stupor, part of him in shock, part of him still back in that makeshift hospital room with Kathy, another part of him hovering somewhere in the stratosphere, an angel or a ghost looking down upon his mortal form. Help me.
He was pushing eighty miles an hour down the highway when he reached the exit for his part of town. For several seconds, he couldn’t remember where Mrs. Blanche’s house was. He’d been picking Ellie up there for the past two weeks or so, but right now, for the life of him, he couldn’t remember how to get there. He drove in confused patterns up and down the neighborhood streets, waiting for his brain to engage. When he saw the wedge of beech trees on the corner and the mailbox shaped like a lighthouse, he breathed with a sigh of relief and pulled into the driveway.
Before he got out of the truck, he examined his reflection in the rearview mirror. At some point during the drive he’d stopped sobbing, yet his eyes still looked puffy and red. When he went to shut down the engine, his hand trembled and thumped into the switch that activated the windshield wipers; the rubber blades reeeet-reeeted across the dry glass.
Mrs. Blanche was in her seventies, a kindly old widow with silver hair piled into a bun atop her head like some cartoon grandmother. She was too preoccupied telling David how wonderful Ellie played the piano that afternoon to notice his distress. She invited him inside but he refused, saying it had been a long day at the hospital and he really just wanted to get home and go to sleep.
“Is Kathy all right?” she asked him, smiling, her brow creased in concern. He assumed it was the poor lighting on the porch that prevented her from seeing the devastation on his face.
“She’s okay,” he managed.
A television played too loudly in the background, the soundtrack replete with canned laughter and applause.
“Why don’t you come in for some dinner before you go?”
“Thank you, but I’m just so tired.” And this certainly was no lie; he hadn’t slept at all last night, worrying about Kathy’s worsening condition. That was when he’d made the decision to get her the hell out of that place. One fucking day too late.
“I can pack you some food to take home,” Mrs. Blanche continued. “You’ll just have to reheat it in the microwave.”
He felt like screaming. “Really, no. But thank you.” He leaned past the woman and called out to his daughter.
Mrs. Blanche turned and smiled down at Ellie when she came to the door. She was holding her shoe box with the bird eggs inside.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Say good-bye to Mrs. Blanche.”
There was a hesitation before the girl said good night to the old woman—a tentative pause, her gaze weighty on him, sensing, he deduced, the anguish, grief, and distress on him. It clung to him like a stink.
She knows. The notion struck him like a thunderbolt.
He took her hand, led her down the driveway, and helped her into the passenger seat of the Bronco.
“Mom says I have to ride in the back,” Ellie said. “She says it’s safer.”
“It’s okay this once. Just put your seat belt on.” He closed the door on her and hurried around to the driver’s side. When he got in behind the wheel, he saw that Ellie had climbed into the back and was buckling up behind the passenger seat.
Mrs. Blanche waved to them from the doorway. David honked his horn in return, using the sound to mask the sob that ruptured from him. When he pulled out onto the street, he turned on the radio, found an alternative rock station, and cranked the volume so his daughter wouldn’t hear him cry.
58
Tim’s face remained impassive throughout the whole telling of the story. When David finished, he felt spent, drained, some vital part of himself having been removed and destroyed in the process. A silence simmered between them now, and for a moment, David was grateful for it. He just hung his head and allowed his eyes to examine the wood grain of the tabletop.
Tim climbed up out of his chair and ambled over to a bottle of his moonshine that stood on the counter. He snatched up two lowball glasses and, returning to the table, poured them both two fingers each. Tim knocked his back all in one gulp. David couldn’t even manage to reach out and grasp the glass, he felt so weak.
“Listen,” Tim said after a time. “I love that little girl of yours. And I love you, too, man. You know that. And I’ll do whatever it is you want me to do. You came here for my help, and that’s what I promise to give. If you want to stay here until the end of time, then the place is yours. No one will ever find you here. But I also want you to do something for me. Okay?”