“Are you sure?” I ask quietly. “I mean…your husband, doesn’t he need the papers?”
She waves it off. “He’ll understand. Honestly. I want you to take this car and I want you to get that little girl someplace safe, okay? You understand that’s your job?”
I feel a little lightheaded at the weight that comes thundering down on my shoulders, but I nod. It is my job. I’m doing this.
“You’re up for it, aren’t you?” Della lifts her sunglasses again. “I know you are. I do. And you know how? Because you’ve made it this far. You called me, not the PSFs, not any of the skip tracers. There’s so much evil in this world, and you brought just that tiny bit of light back into it—not for the money or the credit or anything other than to help another human being out. And that’s rare, real rare. You’re a good man, and you should be proud of yourself.”
And it’s like when she says it, I do feel good. Genuinely good. I can’t remember the last time I felt so light. All the blood rushes to my face, but I’m not embarrassed. It’s just that my chest gets tight, and I have to hold my breath or else I’m going to burst out crying all over this stranger. I feel like if she touches me in that caring, simple way again, I’m going to explode into stardust.
And that’s when I realize it: not since Dad. No one’s told me something I’ve done is great or right or even worthy—and maybe it hasn’t been up until this moment. Before he took his life, he used to tell me that sometimes we don’t know what we’re looking for until we find it. I’ve been so angry, at him and at everyone else, that I don’t know how to handle the way I feel now. Because I think I might be happy. I think I might know what I’m supposed to be doing.
Bryson and Zu share a quick hug and he gives me this little fist bump before he climbs into the sedan, settling there like he belongs. I reach over to buckle my passenger in when she seems preoccupied with shaking the last bit of ink out of the dying pen I provided.
As Della gives me her directions for the fastest way to find the freeway and get to Southern California, I can see Zu frantically scribbling something down on that same sheet of notebook paper she and Bryson wrote their notes on the back of. I see the same handwritten message I caught a glimpse of before, only now I know Zu wasn’t the one to write it. The penmanship is too neat, too careful to be hers. When her arm moves, I can finally read the whole thing:
We love you. If you need help, look for my parents—they’re using the names Della and Jim Goodkind—and tell them I sent you.
I startle when Della reaches in to squeeze my shoulder and say good-bye. Zu looks up, panicked, and quickly folds the notebook paper up and leans over me to give it to her.
“Stay safe, honey,” Della says, blowing her a kiss, “the both of you, please.”
“I’ll do my best,” I tell her, shifting out of park. She steps back so I can roll the window up.
I don’t really know why I look in the rearview mirror as we drive away. I still feel a little bit like I’m walking through somebody else’s good dream, like none of this is real. And I know I won’t get the story out of Zu, not the full one, anyway. That’s okay. We’re allowed to have our secrets. Starting now, I’m leaving the past alone in the past.
Growing smaller and smaller in the reflection, Della unfolds the sheet of paper. But I see her when she presses her hand against her mouth, when she slumps against the side of the sedan—overcome, in relief, I don’t know. Zu’s message is only three words, but they nearly bring the lady with a spine like steel to her knees.
Liam is safe.
I think about stopping for the night—finding some cheap motel room along the way to California and trying to get a little bit of shut-eye to recharge, but I can’t bring myself to. After using Della’s money to fill the gas tank as much as I could, I’m left with the same fifteen dollars I had before. Any place charging that little for a room is the kind of place where we’ll wake up and find our car gone in the morning.
Zu keeps her eyes on the green freeway signs as we zoom past. By the way she keeps tapping her fingers against her leg, I think she’s counting them. We can’t keep a steady radio signal this far out in the desert, and I think the silence is starting to unravel some of her confidence. The lightness I felt earlier talking to Della is slowly bleeding away, too, into the dark, barren landscape around us. For the first time in my life, I miss the trees up north. I miss being surrounded by the known and familiar, and having it tucked in around me like a blanket.
I can’t keep ignoring the fact that after I drop off Zu, that’s it. That’s the end of my current plan unless she and the other kids desperately need me to stay and help them. And while it’s a great plan, I need a little more than that, especially since I don’t have the money for any of the state schools in California that might be open. I could see if there are any jobs there as a fieldworker, or in construction. Maybe their police force would take me. If not, I guess there’s always the Children’s League. I doubt they’d be picky, and at least I know I’d be doing something real to help the kids. Something to think about.
I like that. There are choices now. Possibilities.
“This place you’re going,” I say, “is it nice?”
She already wrote the address down for me. Smart thing had it memorized, and realized, even before I did, that we could roughly navigate our way there by zooming in on the skip tracer tablet’s map until it showed the surface streets around San Bernardino. I’d only been to California a few times, enough to start feeling a bit nervous once we hit Quartzsite, one of the last few Arizona towns along the I-10 before the border.
Zu shrugs.
“You’ve never been there before?” I press. “Even though it’s your uncle’s place?”
She weaves her fingers together, then rips them apart.
“Ohhh,” I say, “he doesn’t get along with the rest of your family?”
I get a thumbs-up for that. “Are you sure he’s…I mean, I know it’s your uncle, but he’ll be okay taking you in?”
Zu wraps her arms around herself, miming a big embrace.
“I hope so, kid, ’cause I don’t think you can stick with me if I go looking for, like, the Children’s League.”
It’s like I’ve slapped her in the face—the moment the shock passes, she looks visibly upset. At first I think it’s because what I’ve said was a little mean, but she’s freaking out, shaking her head, waving her hands. No—her mouth forms the words in the dark—not them.
“Why not?” I haven’t heard, you know, pretty things about their methods, but they do get their point and demands across in a way the parents sitting around on the steps of Flagstaff’s city hall never did.
She’s frantically looking around the different compartments of the car, pulling out sheets of paper, then putting them back when she sees there’s something important written on them.
“Dorothy, Dorothy—it’s okay, calm down.” I can tell she’s getting more and more frustrated—and just when I think she’s going to pull the Band-Aids off her face and write on the backs of those, she finally just settles on using the last of the ink to write the message on her palm.
NO!!! THEY ARE TERRIBLE! SCARY! YOU ARE BETTER THAN THAT!
I snort, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel. For a few minutes, I can’t say anything at all. There’s a stone in my throat and I can’t swallow it. A few minutes ago, all I could taste in my mouth was the McDonald’s hamburger I scarfed down for dinner. Now it’s so dry my tongue sticks to the roof of it.
“All right,” I tell her. “All right. I’ll figure something else out.”
Because even if it’s not true, I want it to be.