A cold gust cuts into me as I type a response to Cassie. I need to get something more from her. Something useful. Are the people you’re with dangerous? Where did you meet them? How many are there?
I stand in the freezing cold, waiting for an answer. Any answer. But nothing comes. Finally, I put my phone away and wrap my arms around myself, pulling my shoulders up as I step toward the door.
“Brutal, isn’t it?” When I turn toward the voice, there’s a woman standing in front of the Subaru. She’s smiling at me, a baby buried under the blankets cradled against her chest. “It was so much warmer when we left Brooklyn.”
She is pale with long, reddish hair gathered loosely at her neck and startling blue eyes. She’s beautiful, but fragile-looking, like a long-limbed bird. She looks up at my hacked hair, but her eyes linger as she sways gently from side to side. Unafraid, unashamed on my behalf. When she finally does meet my eyes again there’s this look, like she gets it. Like she’s done that exact same thing to her own hair a bunch of times. Though looking at her, so normal and pretty, that’s seriously hard to believe.
I smile at her and nod, but my mouth feels glued shut. It’s the kindness in her eyes and all that mom-love pulsing off her. If I did speak, my words would surely be a soupy mess. This beautiful, blue-eyed baby-lady reminds me of my mom, of course. If my mom had been there, she never would have let my dad threaten me. He wouldn’t have had to. Because I would have trusted her with the whole truth. I would have told her where I was going. I smile harder at the baby-lady, my eyes filling with tears as I turn away from her and toward the Freshmart.
“I still have to feed the baby, Doug,” she calls out to her husband as I drift away. “Maybe I should go inside. It’s too cold out here and too cramped in the car. Right, baby?” she says, her voice rising. “Way too cold.”
As I continue alone across the frozen parking lot, holding myself tight against another brutal gust, I hear that graceful bird-woman begin to sing to her little baby. And what’s left of my heart finally turns to dust and disappears with the wind.
Inside, the Freshmart is weirdly warm and cheerful, more like a country store than a rest stop on the side of a highway. Nothing like those grimy gas stations near Boston where the bulletproof glass in front of the register is so smeared with handprints it looks like a herd of zombies went for the cashier. There’s even a bulletin board near the register with photos of happy customers and cheerful thank-you notes pinned one over another. The tall man with thick gray hair and a perfect smile behind the counter looks like the hearty type who might have built the place with his bare hands.
“Cold enough for you?” he calls as I step inside.
Careful. That’s my first thought. I need not to seem suspicious. I’m still trying to believe that my dad was just threatening to have Dr. Shepard call out the dogs, but I can’t know that for sure. I don’t feel like I know anything for sure anymore where my dad is concerned.
“Yep,” I say, smiling harder and more guiltily before ducking fast down the nearest aisle, which of course is not suspicious at all.
Halfway down the aisle I stop and turn to face all the perfectly laid-out snacks—Pringles, Honey Braided Pretzels, beef jerky. Twizzlers. They make me think of Gideon, which, surprisingly, makes my gut twist. But I do feel bad imagining him home with my dad obsessing about me, again. And what if my dad is even right? What if I am too crazy to be out here trying to help Cassie? I squeeze my fists closed, then open, like maybe I can pump my doubt out through my fingertips. Because what I need is not to let what he said get to me. What I need to do instead is to get busy proving him wrong.
I hear the door to the Freshmart open again, brace for the woman and her baby to head down my way.
“Cold enough for you?” the man behind the counter calls again in the exact same cheerful way. It’s creepy, the second time. Like he is something less than human.
“Yeah, definitely,” Jasper answers. I step back so I can see him near the door, blowing on his hands. He has on my dad’s black coat. The dark color makes his green eyes glow. “This can’t be normal for May?”
“Too hot, too cold, too wet, too windy. Always seems too much of something around here.”
“You have a bathroom?”
“Sure thing. All the way down in the back.”