Hawley kept writing. “I told you not to open your goddamn mouth.”
And so she didn’t. She said nothing as her father filled out the rest of the form and then showed the police his license. She said nothing as they went through her bag—dumping her wallet and loose change, tissues and tampons onto the chipped plastic table. And she said nothing when Officer Temple came back into the room and said that he’d finally gotten through to Mabel Ridge, and that the old lady wasn’t going to press any charges, that she only wanted the car back, and that they were free to go, once they paid a fine for Loo’s joyride and promised to get her enrolled in driver’s ed.
Hawley jumped up and shook the officer’s hand. He thanked him for his help. He apologized for the trouble. He made Loo apologize, too, and she hated him, and she hated the policeman, who stood there with his dull smile as the words came out of her mouth.
She looked for Marshall as they left. The boy was nowhere in sight, but in the lobby she saw his mother. Mary Titus glanced up from her chair as they passed. The first expression that crossed her face was surprise, and in that moment Loo saw a flicker of the woman she had once been, before her first husband had died and her second husband had left her. Before she’d been evicted or institutionalized. Before she had even been Mary Titus. When she had just been a girl like Loo, doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, ashamed and sorry but also glowing from the thrill. And then the woman’s eyes narrowed, and Loo was nothing but another nail struck into the coffin of her life.
“Hey!” she called.
The Sawtooth apron was still wrapped around her waist. She must have come straight from the restaurant, which meant that Principal Gunderson knew about Loo getting arrested, and so did Agnes, and all of the chefs and probably the busboys, too. Loo’s cheeks flushed. She tried to walk around Mary Titus, but Hawley stopped.
“I want an apology,” the widow said. “And a check for two hundred dollars.”
“The charges got dropped,” Hawley said. “They’re both free to go.”
“The apology is for involving my son in a felony. And the money is for my sanctuary.” Mary Titus smelled the same way Loo did at the end of a shift—like a greasy order of fish and chips. She reached into her purse and pulled out one of her pamphlets. She handed it to Hawley. He looked it over and gave it back to her.
“People don’t care about the future,” said Hawley. “And fishermen need to earn a living today. You should leave this thing alone. You’re only making enemies.”
“Somebody has to save the world instead of just destroying it.” Mary Titus squeezed up her tiny face. “One day, when all of the fish are gone in the North Atlantic, and you’re eating expired tuna out of a can, you’re going to remember this conversation.”
Loo tried to pretend that nothing was wrong, stretching her mouth into a tight grin for the people waiting in the lobby, a vagrant handcuffed to a chair in the corner, and the desk sergeant eyeing them from behind the bulletproof glass. It was only a matter of time before Hawley lost his temper.
“Dad,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Then she turned and made for the exit. But before she got away Mary Titus grabbed hold of the back of Loo’s shirt. The widow was fast and sure as she lifted the cloth in her tiny fist, revealing the solar system drawn across Loo’s skin, her ribs lined with asteroids, the base of her spine circled by Mercury and Venus.
“Looks like my son’s been doodling on your daughter. Maybe you’ll care about that, Sam Hawley.”
Hawley stared at the spray of stars on her skin. The comet that disappeared in a trail beneath her belt buckle. And the ripple that Loo had been waiting for shuddered along the length of his face. Loo yanked her shirt back down. She shoved the widow away from her. Mary Titus stumbled and fell against the vending machine.
And that’s when Marshall came out of the bathroom.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
They all looked at one another. Then Hawley picked the boy up and threw him against the wall. Marshall came down hard on the edge of the water fountain and collapsed to the floor in a heap. Mary Titus screamed, and the policemen came scurrying out from behind their desks and everyone was separated again and eventually more sets of forms were produced that they all had to fill out. It was another forty minutes before they were finally released, and by then Hawley had cooled down and stepped back inside his shell, apologized for losing his temper, paid a fine for disturbing the peace and even paid Mary Titus the two hundred dollars. He took Loo’s arm as they left, brought her to the truck, opened the passenger door and pushed her inside the same way Officer Temple had done only a few hours before.
“Can I talk now?” Loo asked.
Hawley did not answer her until he had walked around and climbed into the driver’s side. He closed the door and gripped the wheel. “I can’t believe that piece of shit had his hands on you.”
“He’s not a piece of shit.”
“He told the police you stole the car. He would have walked for this and you would have gone to jail.”
Loo did not care. She worried only that her father had scared Marshall away and that now he would never shout her name again or draw another universe across her back.
“I didn’t—” she began. But Hawley cut her off.
“You’re still a minor, but grand larceny means you’d go away for at least two years. And you weren’t even careful. I mean, for God’s sake, of all the people in the world, you had to rip off Mabel Ridge?”
“I didn’t steal the car!” Loo shouted. “Besides, it’s not even hers. It’s Mom’s.”
The lights of the police station filtered through the windshield of the truck, casting Hawley’s face in a bluish glow. For the first time, he looked at her.
“Are you sure?”
“The registration’s in her name.”
The muscles in her father’s shoulders tightened. He turned his head and began scanning the building, the other cars, the fence. “Is it here?”
“No,” said Loo. “We left it on 127.”
Hawley gunned the engine. He stepped on the clutch and shifted. He said, “Show me where.”
Loo directed him along the back routes. Her father flicked on the high beams, the truck springing forward along the twisted road. Oncoming traffic honked, but Hawley kept the brights full force as he slid to the edge of the driver’s seat.
“We should have passed the car by now,” she said.
“What kind was it?”
“A Firebird.”
“Firebird.” For a moment Hawley’s gaze drifted. He shook his head.
“What is it?”
“Nothing. I just never thought your mother would own a Pontiac.”
When they hit Beverly Farms, Hawley pulled off to the side of the road. In the glow of the hazard lights she could see him working his lip. A moth fluttered through the open window and began throwing itself against the dashboard, the roof, the glimmer of the clock radio.