“How’d my accident happen?”
“You were mad, that’s for sure.”
“At you?”
He laughed. “Of course. Your parents, too, I guess.”
“Did we break up?” I asked.
“We didn’t break up. You broke up with me,” he said.
“Over the baby?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I settled in the right lane and hit cruise control. The road was long and straight before us, and I kept my gaze toward the distance ahead. “I’m listening,” I said.
Tom told me about the day Madeline found Althea’s pregnancy test in her bathroom. When she asked Althea about it, Althea said she intended to get an abortion. Madeline was flatly against it. Diego was against it, too, but he said the choice was Althea’s.
“Your parents started fighting. You knew they’d be upset,” he continued. “That’s why you didn’t want to tell them. You were leaving the next day for college. You were packing and everything. It was all pretty emotional.”
A small, tight ache started behind my eyes, and I touched a hand to my eyebrows. “How about you? What did you think about the abortion?” I asked.
He shifted in the passenger seat. “I was mad that you hadn’t told me you were pregnant. Then I said I’d support whatever you decided.”
I glanced over briefly at his calm features and then back to the road. “Why do I get the feeling there’s more to it?”
He took his time answering. “It wasn’t enough just to support you,” he said. “You asked me what I really wanted. I said it didn’t matter what I wanted because it was your body, and you said it did matter because I was the father. You wouldn’t let me just be neutral.”
He fiddled with the button of his window, pushing it down and up a couple of times so the sucking wind alternated with silence.
“So what did you say?” I asked.
He spoke loudly. “I said we should get married, okay? I said, either way, whether you had the baby or not, we should go through it together.” He jabbed the window down and up once more. “And you know what you said? You said I was a coward.”
I glanced over again to see that his gaze was narrowed toward the horizon. Every line of his face was taut.
“But I wasn’t a coward,” he said. “That was the one time I stood up to you. And that’s when you left me. That’s when you took my bike and practically killed yourself.”
The road churned beneath our wheels, and I held tight to the steering wheel. He was talking to me like I was Althea again, and I didn’t know what to do for him, so I just kept driving.
He wiped a hand against his eye. “I should have told you,” he said. “I wanted you to keep our baby. I’m sorry. I did.” His voice cracked but he kept on. “I left you to make the decision alone. I thought that was the right thing, but you needed me. I should have told you how I really felt.”
“It’s okay,” I said softly.
“No, it’s not. You were so upset.” His voice dropped low. “Can you forgive me?”
I glanced over, startled. He was wincing, with his eyes closed.
“Of course,” I said. “Tom, Althea’s accident wasn’t your fault. She made her own decision to go riding that night. I’m sure she knew how you really felt.”
“You haven’t been listening,” he said, and his voice went dead. “Of course she knew how I really felt. She wanted me to man up and say it, and I wouldn’t. That’s what I can’t forget.”
*
Tom and I reached Doli at the end of the day, when the last sunlight was leaving the desert, and the sky was dimming to a grainy purple. We hadn’t talked much more, but he seemed calmer, like maybe talking to me had helped after all. Stars appeared past the bug splats on the windshield. South of town, the boxcars stretched out in a long, weathered line, hunkered down, waiting for another earthquake like the one that had stranded them there.
As we came down the ridge and hit the turn at McLellens’ Pot Bar and Sundries, I rolled my window down to stare at the new construction and garish lights. Crickets chirped from the sage.
“Slow down,” I said to Tom.
The McLellens had expanded. A lighted billboard promised ATV rentals, tourist info, clean bathrooms, and cold drinks. A cartoon drawing of a girl with dark curls was holding a video camera and riding an ATV. She looked vaguely like the original me. A big sign said BRING ROSIE HOME!
The next boxcar, previously a massage parlor of ill repute, was now a bar/gift shop called The Sandman’s, and a dozen tourists were out on the deck nursing drinks in fancy, sweaty glasses. Tinny reggae music topped off the ambiance. I instinctively slouched down in my seat out of view, even though no one could recognize me.
“Don’t stop,” I said.
“I thought we were here,” Tom said.
“No. Our place is at the other end. Go.”
As Tom drove down the dirt road beside the row of railroad cars, I had a bad premonition that Larry had similarly capitalized on my fame. A drooping string of bare light bulbs ran from one boxcar to the next, illuminating glimpses of new, garish paint. Oil drums lined the road like guideposts, with pails of plastic flowers on top. The Doli boxcars had always been poor, but now they were cheap, too.
Yet when our boxcar came into view, it was the same rusty, unpainted metal as before. The same threadbare curtains hung in the windows, and a defiant old pot of real petunias sat on the top step. It felt like years since I’d been home, but it looked miraculously the same.
“Is this it? You sure?” Tom asked.
“I know my own home,” I said.
“I think this has gone far enough Thea,” he said quietly. “You don’t want to bother these people.”
“You probably ought to decide once and for all whether you believe me or not.”
I opened my door and got out on stiff legs, straightening my shirt over my belly. The night was soft and smelled of dusty eucalyptus. A flock of thrushes landed in my chest. Behind me, Tom got out and slammed his door.
I glanced under the boxcar to where I used to store my bike and found Dubbs’s bike in the same shadow. I climbed the familiar, sagging wooden steps to find a little sign had been posted next to the door, under the sconce light.
PLEASE RESPECT OUR PRIVACY.
THIS MEANS YOU.
THANK YOU.
THE SINCLAIR/HOGARTH FAMILY
I tugged at the door. It didn’t open. “Ma?” I called. “Dubbs?”
“Thea, what are you doing?” Tom said. “They don’t want visitors.”
I tried to peer in the gap of the kitchen curtains, past the old screen. The window was up and the sink was empty. That was all I could see, but it tugged at me.
“Ma!” I called in the window. “It’s me! Rosie! Let me in.”
A scrambling came from inside.
“Rosie?” said a bright young voice.
A clicking came from inside, and then the door rolled open sidewise on its wheels. My sister Dubbs stood in the opening. Her face was alight with anticipation.
“Hi, Dubbs,” I whispered.