And I think it’s pretty telling that when I was born, my mother didn’t give me her last name. She could have, seeing as how she was Big Joyner and Lucy Huff’s only child and sole hope of passing it on to the next generation, and from what I hear Huff used to carry some very respectable weight in Dug County.
Well, until my mother did everything she could to destroy that.
I stop and glance behind me, eyes watering in the wind. The first set of headlights has been joined by a second set about a quarter mile behind them. Great. I’ve already started into the blind curve and there’s no shoulder on this side of the road. If the first car swings wide, not even flattening myself against the side of the mountain will help. But if I cross the road then they won’t know I need a ride, and will blow on past.
I think I’d better stay right where I am. Any farther into the curve and they won’t see me until they’re right on top of me.
I stamp my feet, trying to get some feeling back into them.
I wish my coat was red instead of black and had a hood, but this was the only one the mission had left that fit me.
The headlights grow closer, illuminating me.
Shivering, I stick out my thumb.
Brake lights flare and the vehicle—an SUV—slows.
God, I hope it’s only one person. A woman would be best but they don’t usually stop for hitchhikers at almost three in the morning. Unless they’re the do-gooder type, who want to save me from being just another unidentified broken body pitched out and left on the side of the road. That would work.
The SUV pulls wide of me, straddling the centerline, and the passenger window goes down. A rush of raucous music and hot air sour with smoke and alcohol hits me, and a middle-aged guy with a beard sticks his head out and grins. “Need a ride?”
Shit. There are four guys in the car, and there’s no way they’re going to work down at the factory. More likely they just got kicked out of the Corner Tavern after last call. Shit.
“Come on, we’ll take you anywhere you want to go,” the driver calls, his voice thick with laughter. “Hell, I might even have enough fuel left in this old tank to take you all the way around the world.”
The backseat explodes in rowdy hilarity.
Okay, yeah, no. “Thanks anyway, but here comes my ride,” I say, glancing back at the next car coming and stepping away from the passenger door. I want them to leave, and fast, so this next car still half a mile back will stop.
“That ain’t your ride, that’s Mike and his girlfriend following us home,” the passenger says, then hawks and spits into the snow. “You better jump in before you freeze your pretty little ass off.” He turns to the backseat. “Make some room for her, will you?” He laughs. “There ain’t no room on your lap, Charley. Your belly’s too fat.”
And now there’s a third car, way back at the hill but moving fast.
“No, my ride’s coming, I can see it,” I say, shaking my head and pointing past the second car, which is slowing behind the SUV. “Thanks anyway.” I shove my hands in my pockets and start trudging up the curve just to get away. I would cross the road but that looks like I’m scared and that’s definitely not the message I want to send. I keep walking, walking, walking, shoulders hunched and heart pounding, until finally the SUV revs and blows past me, shortly followed by the second car. I keep my head down, watching from under my hair as their taillights round the bend and disappear, then I stop and let out a shaky exhale.
That could have been bad.
My mother used to hitchhike everywhere, sometimes with me trailing along, and it had gotten us into some iffy situations, the kind where the guy driving the truck pulls over into the woods or a field and my mother tells me to get out and go sit on the bumper until she calls me. I didn’t know what that was about and I would go stand by the back of the truck, memorizing the license plate, writing my name in the dirt with my shoe, crouching and studying ants, coughing at the smelly exhaust clouding out of the tailpipe. Once, they even forgot I was back there, I guess, because after twenty long minutes of waiting they started to drive away and I had to yell and wave my arms and run after them just to get them to stop.
I used to wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t shouted, and just let them leave. Would my mother have remembered me and come back, or would she have stayed silent and just kept going? And what if Beale had been driving by and found me sitting on a bank of violets near the road and crying? He would have stopped for me, I’m sure, and taken me back to his farm where Aunt Loretta would have washed my face and brushed my hair and fed me cookies and milk, and tried to find out my name.
But I wouldn’t have told them. I would have said I was an orphan and been so good they would have stopped asking questions and just kept me.
My whole life would have been different, not just one beautiful year of it.
I would have been warm and fed and wanted. There would have been supper on the table and my own bed in my own room. Aunt Loretta would have helped me with my homework and I would have helped her cook and feed the chickens and pick the raspberries and sell the pumpkins. I would have made every one of those barn kittens my own, played in the pond, washed my hair, showered and brushed my teeth every morning, waited for the school bus and watched the swallows soar to greet the day.
I would never have been dirty and smelly and wearing outgrown clothes that were so tight they chafed my armpits and rode up my butt. I would never have been one of the poor kids on the free school lunch program, and would never have had to beg the school nurse for tampons because I didn’t have any money to get them. I wouldn’t have stolen used bras from the Salvation Army bins, leftover food from the grocery store Dumpster, bedded down in the backseats of cars, or watched my mother sell every single thing we ever had that was worth something.
I glance up into the snow-swirled darkness to where Beale sleeps.
I would have had a father, sort of, and another grandmother, sort of.
Just no mother.
And no baby sister.
My chest tightens.
I can never see Beale again. My mother has made sure of that.
I pick up my pace, walking faster because all this time the low rumble that’s been humming in the background is louder now, much louder, and that’s the third car coming and somehow I ended up smack in the worst part of the blind curve. I glance back and see its headlights sweeping round, hear the engine roaring like this guy’s in a hurry, and all of a sudden I know I’m in the wrong place and there’s nowhere to go, I can see by the headlights’ path that he’s swinging wide and there is no shoulder here so I step out into the road to try and run across even though that means I won’t get the ride. I try to do it fast but I’m cold and clumsy and the canvas bag is heavy, and I’m only three steps into the lane when the pickup comes barreling into sight. The headlights blind me and my heart surges so hard I gasp with the pain of it and stop dead, knowing a terror so great it freezes the night with hard crystal brilliance.
And then the headlights veer away and the truck whips by and it’s blue, a blue truck with spinning tires that spray wide arcs of snow as it skids past. The headlights flash over me one last time then fly up into the bare-limbed trees as it pitches backward over the bank.
Chapter 6
THE SOUND OF IMPACT STUNS ME, the shrieking and squealing of crashing metal, and the final loud, dull whumpf. From somewhere over the bank a tree branch cracks, sharp like a gunshot, snapping me out of my paralysis.
I start across the road, shaking so bad each step takes too long, looking both ways before I cross the centerline, which is crazy and stupid but I do it anyway. The wind is easing and the snow lessening, but the flakes are bigger and wetter and fatter. There’s a weird sound carried on the wind, a low, ugly noise that makes the hair at the back of my neck prickle and the closer I get to the bank, the louder it is.
Someone is moaning
.
I follow the tires’ tracks to the edge, and peer over.
I see the headlights first, about thirty feet down the bank. The truck is there, rammed sideways into two pine trees that have stopped it before it fell too far. The driver’s window is shattered, all spiderwebbed glass, and a big branch has fallen on the hood.
Something moves inside the cab, against the shattered glass.
A guy’s face, pale and smeared with blood.
My knees go weak, and sudden, shimmering silver speckles float in front of my eyes. Help. I have to get help. I take a deep breath, then another. The faintness recedes. I turn, take three steps into the road and stop. Help from who, Harlow? He’s the closest one on this stretch of the road but he’s at least two miles away and doesn’t even have a phone and by the time I got there . . .
“Oh God, help,” I say, frantically looking around for another set of headlights but the road stays dark. I step closer, scared to go right to the edge. Clear my throat and call, “Are you all right?”
Silence, and then a weak, “No,” from the truck.
“Is it only you? Are you alone?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you climb out of the truck and come up here?”
“No.” Silence. “My head’s bleeding and my knee is . . . ow, God.”
“Do you have a cell phone?” I call, crouching and wringing my hands.
Silence.
“Do you have a cell? ” I shout, standing right back up.
“Jesus, you don’t have to yell,” he says, slurring his words. “Yeah, somewhere.”
“Is it in the truck? Can you see it?” I ask and when he doesn’t answer, I slip the canvas bag and my purse from my shoulder, wishing they were any color but black and setting them at the spot where the skidding tire tracks barrel over the edge. Dug County is teeming with hunters keen on following signs, and I’m praying the next car by is one of them. “Okay, listen. I’m coming down. We have to find your phone.”
No answer.
Great. I take one last look around and lift my foot to step over the edge of the bank. Then stop. The ground is an unforgiving slope, and thanks to the snow, the only place where I can actually see what I’m stepping on are the tire tracks. There’s little to hold on to, a sapling here and a clump of briars there. What if I lose my balance and fall? What if I get there and he’s already dead? Or dying? What do I do if he’s dying?
I don’t know, I don’t know.
Paralysis sweeps in, anchoring me in place.
I can’t do this.
I can’t watch someone die. Not again.
The shimmering faintness is back.
I can hear myself breathing.
I shouldn’t go down there. I should just stay here and wait for someone to come . . .
Stupid. No one ever comes.
I put my hands to my face. Cover my eyes.
It doesn’t stop the panic.
What if I get down there and then a car goes by up here but doesn’t see the tracks in the snow or my bags? Then we lose our only chance at help.
So stay here and wait for help.
No, go down there and do something.
I take another deep breath. Pat my arm until the panic recedes.
There has to be a way. There has to be.
I scramble back to the bags and brush the snow off of them. Unzip the tote and rummage for the ruby blazer. It’s not a bright red but it’s better than black, an eye-catcher in a landscape of nothing but white and brown and gray. I tie the arms of the blazer through the tote’s straps. Nickel-size snowflakes settle on the velvet, snowflakes that look a lot like fragile, lacy flowers.
“Some people think Queen Anne’s lace is nothing but a weed,” Aunt Loretta says, walking me along the field’s edge, careful to watch for snakes, “a waste plant not fit for a flower garden, but don’t you believe them. That kind of shortsightedness will stop you from ever appreciating any of life’s ordinary beauty, and that would be a shame, Sayre, because Mother Nature does not make junk.” She pauses, the breeze blowing her short, silver hair from her forehead, and cups one of the fluffy white umbrella-like flowers in her palm. “Queen Anne’s lace may look delicate but it has a tough stem, strong roots, and the ability to not only survive but to thrive in even the meanest environment. That may not sound impressive, Sayre, but trust me, those things count for something. . . .”
All right. All right. Get a grip.
You have to do something.
I rise and look around.
I wish I knew what time it was. If it’s still not three then maybe waiting up here on the road for someone to come by on their way to the factory would be better than disappearing down the slope, but if it’s already past three, then the odds of anyone coming by are—
The guy in the truck groans.
“I’m coming,” I call, although I have no idea what I’m going to do once I get there. Steeling myself, I set one foot down sideways over the bank. There’s no real foothold, I can tell, nothing to stop me from rolling all the way down.
I sit, hang my legs over the edge, and start down on my butt. The ground is frozen and unyielding but every time I slip I somehow dig my heels into a rut and stop before I end up out of control. A handful of firmly anchored sticker bushes stop me once, a rock to brace against a second time. There is no sound but my own ragged breathing.
“Jesus,” I mutter, glancing at the truck. The grille is hanging off, the hood buckled, and the smear on the window is awful, a deep, crimson-black stain across a sheet of crackled glass.
Beyond it, a pale face is streaked with brighter blood. Two dark, glazed eyes watch me from under a swatch of wet, matted hair.
“Almost there,” I call again in a voice high with false cheer. “Just hang on, okay?”
He blinks and nods slightly. Winces and closes his eyes.
“Don’t fall asleep,” I say because the one thing I know is that people with concussions shouldn’t be allowed to go to sleep.
He nods again, just a little, but doesn’t open his eyes.
“Hey!” I snap. “Did you hear me? You can’t fall asleep!”
He groans and his eyes flutter open. “You yell a lot.” His voice is slurred and muffled behind the shattered glass. “I’m cold.”
“I know it’s cold, but I’m almost there,” I say, which doesn’t make any sense but it doesn’t seem to matter because he nods again, and lifts a bloody, swollen hand to his face. Two of his fingers hang mangled and crooked off the side.
“Shit!” he blurts, jerking back in shock when he sees them. “Oh God, that’s bad. Gross. I can’t move them. God, that hurts. How the hell . . . I can’t even . . .” He gazes at me, stricken. “Don’t leave me here.”
“I won’t. I swear.” I let go of the sticker bush I’ve been holding on to and slide a few more feet down the bank, bruising my tailbone on a rock and filling my jeans’ legs with snow that burns my bare skin. “Almost there.”
And then a dull rumble surges and stops, the side of his truck lights up, and a car door slams somewhere above and behind me.
I turn, heart racing, and stare up the bank.
A figure steps into the light.
“Help,” I croak, and then louder, “Help!”
“Sayre?”
It’s Candy.
Chapter 7
“OH, MY GOD, CANDY, YEAH, IT’S me,” I cry, jumping up and waving, slipping and falling back into a crouch to hold my balance.
“What the hell is going on? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I call, swiping a shaky hand across my eyes. “Can you—”
“What happened?” She hunkers low at the edge of the bank, a squat, misshapen silhouette in the headlights, and stares down at me. Her face looks sunken, her pale eyes rimmed with shadows, and her thin, scraggly hair
whips wild in the wind. “Well?”
“I was walking and he swerved not to hit me and went off the road.”
“Is he alive?” she asks.
“Yeah, but his head’s bleeding and he hurt his knee—”
“I know that truck. That’s Ben Greenwood’s boy Evan,” she says, rising again. “He’ll be all right. That whole family has hard heads. Now, come on up here. We’ll send the ambulance back for him when we get to the hospital. Hurry.”
I stare at her, certain I haven’t heard right. “What?”
“Your mother was conscious again for a little while, and I told her I’d find you and bring you back with me,” she says impatiently. “She wants to talk to you. Now, come on. You can try to call EMS as we drive, if there’s any friggin’ service out in these goddamn boondocks.”
I blink. Look over at the truck, at those dark, scared, pleading eyes and then back up at Candy. “We can’t just leave him here.”
“Can he walk?”
I look back at the truck. The guy—Evan—tries to sit up higher in the seat. He groans and a single tear rolls down his cheek, cutting a bright, fresh path in the drying blood.
“No,” I say. “Not by himself but maybe if we both—”
She exhales, harsh and impatient. “If he’s hurt that bad, moving him will only make it worse. There’s nothing you can do. He has to wait for the ambulance and the sooner you get up here, the sooner we can call them.” She pulls her cell from her jacket, studies it, and shakes her head. “Nope, no service. Now come on.”
“But I promised I wouldn’t leave him,” I say.
“Jesus Christ, I don’t need this,” Candy mutters, clenching her jaw and staring off down the road. “Look, your mother’s in a bad way so I’m not real concerned about him right now, okay? As soon as we get to the hospital we’ll send the—”
“Candy, I can’t just—”
“Goddamnit, Sayre. Get your ass up here now.”
“I will, I promise, but he has to come, too,” I say, voice shaking. “If you would just come down here and help me get him out of the truck—”