When Mirabella put her mind to something, she didn’t give up easily.
Jimmy Joe was glad to be back on the road. It felt good, even knowing what he was heading into, watching those miles roll by, knowing every mile marker he passed put him that much closer to J.J. and home.
Home. He thought about that, focusing his mind on what it felt like to be there, walking himself one by one through the rooms of the big old white frame, two-story house he’d grown up in. Remembering what it smelled like-the smell of canning tomatoes in his mama’s kitchen in the summertime, the wet-dog odor of the back porch when it rained, the sweet, warm fragrance of honeysuckle. He thought of the pantry door where his growth and that of all his brothers and sisters had been charted from the time they were big enough to stand straight and tall, and rooms filled with shabby furniture and cluttered with books and magazines and children’s artwork in crayon and poster paints. He thought of the old tree house, and the silk spider that had spun her web in its doorway.
And he thought about his own house-a real nice house about a mile down the road, solidly built of red brick, with a big front porch and white trim and a nice big sunny kitchen, and great old oaks and pine trees for shade. He’d done a pretty good job with it, too; made it nice and homey for J.J., filling up the rooms with books and pictures and things he’d brought back from his trips, interesting things from all over the country. Navajo rugs and Acoma pottery, and a big old bed he’d found up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, hand-carved from four-hundred-year-old walnut trees.
He was happy there, and so was J.J. And when he had to leave, well, there was the old place and a grandmama right down the road, and you couldn’t ask for better than that. No, sir.
He said to himself, Jimmy Joe Starr, you’re a lucky man. Couldn’t ask for more than you’ve got, and that’s a fact.
When it came to families, he’d always thought it was too bad everybody couldn’t have one like his. They weren’t perfect, nowhere near it, with his daddy dying so young; and his mama could be tough as nails sometimes. And there was his sister Joy Lynn’s two divorces, which was something of a family record, and brother Roy who liked his beer a little bit too much, and his youngest brother Calvin who’d dropped out of high school and never had learned how to work a lick or hold on to a job.
But there was a lot of love in the family in spite of nobody being perfect. And when the holidays rolled around, or somebody’s birthday, and the whole bunch got together-and there would be babies crying and kids running underfoot, and the womenfolk gathered in the kitchen all talking at once, and the men outside arguing politics or throwing a ball around if the weather was good, and the older kids playing hide-and-seek or hunting turtles in the woods behind the house-then he knew how good he had it.
Then he knew-oh, how he knew-that he was lonely.
Much as he hated to admit it, it was the truth. No matter how much he loved his kid, or how great his mama was, or how much he enjoyed his brothers’ and sisters’ company, there were times when it wasn’t enough. Times when he would come in off the road and walk into his house and hear his footsteps echo in a kitchen that smelled of nothing but “empty,” and his big old hand-carved bed seemed cold, and way too roomy for one person. Times he would even feel envious watching his brothers and sisters bicker and squabble with their mates. It had been a long time since he’d had anybody to argue with over breakfast about something as foolish as Walt Disney movies.
I’m going to read to my baby…
Suddenly, clear as a bell, he could hear Mirabella saying that, hear the fierceness in her voice, the joy in her laughter. He could see her face, too, the sparkle in her gray eyes, her nose turning pink, and the wind in her hair…
His heart went bump against his ribs. He muttered, “Christmas,” under his breath and reached over and turned on the radio to see if he could find some music to take his mind off things he had no business thinking about.
He was lucky. On the only clear station in that part of New Mexico he caught Brenda Lee just finishing up “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” and right after that Elvis started in with “Blue Christmas.” He left it there and turned the volume up loud so he wouldn’t have to listen to all the talk coming in on the CB about the mess waiting for him up ahead in Texas.
For one of the few-the very few-times in her life, Mirabella was feeling uncertain; she would never admit to being afraid. But as she clung to the wheel of her Lexus and doggedly followed the taillights of the big rig in front of her, she felt a chill. that had nothing to do with the snow blowing past her windshield.
Everything had been fine until about ten miles into Texas, when all of a sudden both lanes of traffic on the interstate had slowed to a crawl. A few miles farther on she’d come to know why. Snow-not from the threatening black clouds overhead, but blown by the wind across that flat, unbroken plain-had reduced visibility to nearly zero. Packed down by the tires of hundreds of eighteen-wheelers, it had turned the road surface into a narrow track of bumpy, rutted ice. The double line of trucks became one, an endless train creeping fitfully eastward at a pace slower than a man could walk. With very good reason. If Mirabella needed more dramatic evidence of the need for caution, there were the dozens of cars stuck in roadside drifts and even a few big rigs jackknifed on the median to remind her.
Oh, God, she thought as she crept past yet another disabled vehicle, what if I…
No. Ice trickled down her spine, and she shivered. No, she wouldn’t even think of such a possibility. It wouldn’t happen to her; she wouldn’t let it. She wasn’t an idiot; she knew enough not to make stupid mistakes. She knew the rules: Don’t brake or accelerate suddenly. Always turn into a skid. She would be okay if she kept her head. She wouldn’t panic. Of course not-Mirabella never panicked.
Oh, but how long could this go on? It was only fifty miles to Amarillo, but at this rate, that would take hours. Ten hours. It would be dark in three. And-oh, God, she had to go to the bathroom now. How was she ever going to be able to wait that long?
She knew the answer, of course. She would simply have to. Because there was absolutely no way she could stop, even if there had been a place to do so in that vast, unending whiteness.
To make matters worse, the Tylenol she’d taken this morning at breakfast had worn off, and now she couldn’t even reach for her purse to get some more. She didn’t dare take a hand from the wheel, not for an instant. But, oh, how her back hurt. The pressure was worse than ever, too. She felt as if she were being squeezed in a giant vise.
In fact, Mirabella was absolutely certain she had never been so miserable in her life, and that things couldn’t get much worse than they were right now.
A few minutes later she knew how wrong she was.
Suddenly there was a soft pop, and she felt a flood of warmth and wetness, a simultaneous release of pressure. She gasped. No-she felt as if the air were being sucked from her lungs.
For the first time in her life her mind went completely blank, as if someone had pushed a button and instantly wiped her data banks clean of every rational thought and all common sense. In short, she panicked.
And then she hit the brakes.
The next thing she knew she was clinging uselessly to the steering wheel while the world outside her windows passed by in a dizzying white blur. There were horrifying lurches and teeth-jarring crunches and explosive popping sounds and things flying at her from all sides. Air bags! Thank God-she was engulfed-all but smothered-in air bags. Then there was stillness…and silence, except for a soft whimpering, which Mirabella realized with utter horror was coming from her.