“All the more reason for you to say yes, then—if or when it ever happens.” I saw the answering flash of his teeth. And, as if I’d asked the question out loud, he added, “And no, you’d never be battered if you were my wife. Not by me, at any rate.”
I reached across and brushed my fingers along his cheekbone, where the hollow dipped it into shadow. The skin was tightly stretched. He was concentrating on the road ahead and almost flinched under my touch.
“I’m not made of glass, Sean,” I said, keeping my voice deceptively gentle. “Four of them couldn’t break me. You won’t come close. And I meant what I said last night.”
“Which part?”
“The part where I told you if you dared hold anything back, I’d kill you where you stood.”
He let a laugh form, even if it was a shaky one. “Ah, that part,” he murmured, and his voice turned wry. “I think you almost did.”
I grinned at him, mostly in relief. A feeling that lasted right up until a disembodied voice spoke up from the backseat.
“I’d like to stop for a short break when it’s next convenient,” my father said, sounding cool and collected and not at all like a man who’s only just woken from an uncomfortable nap. “No rush,” he added. “Please—do finish your conversation first … .”
CHAPTER 27
We drove through the night, Sean and I, heading steadily southwest, one town blurring into the next on the endless road. We passed signs for familiar English place names in unfamiliar locations, all jumbled together until it was like something out of a long bizarre dream.
Dawn broke as we crossed the border from Virginia into Tennessee, the sun rising ragged over the Appalachians. It sparkled on the dew in roadside pastures, stretching the outlines of the trees and the dozing horses. We chased our own shadow for a hundred miles before it fell away and was trampled beneath the Camry’s wheels. The daylight, which started out so softly tentative, sharpened to a vicious edge by noon.
By 3:30 P.M., allowing for the hour we’d gained going from Eastern to Central time, we were approaching Memphis, Tennessee. We stopped at a roadside diner that had been cryogenically frozen sometime in the mid-fifties. An antique jukebox played a series of old maudlin country numbers, to which the wait staff sang along with more enthusiasm than technical accuracy. Raucous, but welcoming.
Our waitress must have been sixty-five, with skin the color of bourbon and the legs of a woman half her age, which she showed off beneath a skirt that was barely longer than her apron. She also had an accent thick enough to slice as she called my father “sugar” and bumped him with her hip as she declared how much she just loved the way he done talk.
I half-expected my father to tighten up like a clam’s armpit at her impertinence. To my surprise he seemed happy to chat to the woman, whose name was Glory, even going so far as to compliment her on the caterwauling she’d been subjecting us to.
“I knew you folk must be believers,” she said, beaming at us. “You on this road, headin’ west, and you gotta be goin’ to Graceland.” She finished scribbling on her pad, already heading for the kitchen, which we could see into behind the long counter, calling back over her shoulder, “You see the King, sugar, you be sure to done tell him Glory never lost the faith, now. We know he ain’t dead. It’s all some gov’ment conspiracy. Yes sir.”
“Of course,” my father said gravely. “I’d be delighted to pass on your message.”
“‘Delighted,’ huh?” She laughed and shook her head as she slapped in our order. “You sure talk pretty, sugar.”
My father waited until she was out of earshot, then looked at the rest of us, totally puzzled. “The king of where?” he said.
Once we’d stopped, it was hard to get going again. We drove for another couple of hours before Sean finally caved and agreed that we needed to rest up until morning. By that time, we were just approaching Little Rock and night had fallen hard on Arkansas. The city looked very bright as it loomed on the horizon, initially beautiful against the utter black. It was only when we got nearer that the glitter seemed to take on a slightly tarnished quality.
We picked out a small nondescript chain hotel near the airport. It was close to the interstate and promised Jacuzzi rooms, free HBO movies, and a business center.
We left the Camry under the impressive portico at the front entrance while we gave the woman on the desk a sob story about having our passports and wallets stolen. We assuaged her immediate suspicions by producing a large enough cash deposit to counterbalance any qualms that we were about to trash the place and skip out. I think our air of bone-deep weariness mixed with English respectability won her over.
She gave us adjoining rooms, told us what time the complimentary breakfast would be laid out in the lobby, and had already wished us a pleasant stay before it occurred to her that might be difficult.
As we trudged back out to fetch our luggage I was aware of being so tired my vision was vibrating with the effort of keeping my eyes focused. I noted the movements of the people in the lobby almost on autopilot. If someone had pulled an Uzi out from under his coat I would have seen it, but I was probably too far gone to comprehend what it meant.
More than twenty-four hours sitting in a car without sports seats made me feel like someone had been kicking me repeatedly in the base of my spine. I was praying that, sometime sooner rather than later, the nerves into my left thigh would overload and shut down.
Walking out of the hotel, I could feel the gathered heat releasing from the ground up into the darkness. The night air was hot, and humid enough to drink, sticking my shirt to my back almost instantly. Sean popped the boot and he and my father grabbed the bags while my mother wheeled out a luggage trolley from the lobby.
It was only as Sean swung my bag up with the others that I remembered I hadn’t re-zipped it fully after our last stop. I stretched out a hand, but I was too tired and too slow. The little brown plastic bottle of Vicodin I’d stuffed just inside the top of the bag went spinning onto the ground and rolled to a stop by my father’s foot.
He picked it up before I could stop him, recognized the type of the bottle and scanned the label automatically. He was halfway through handing it back when he stopped, frowning, and looked up at me.
“These are yours, I assume, Charlotte?” he said. He held the pill bottle top and bottom with a disdainful finger and thumb and shook it gently, gauging the level of the contents by the resultant rattle.
“Yes,” I said, reaching for the bottle, but he whisked it out of reach. Fatigue is not a good sedative for temper. Mine lurched into life, leaving blotches of vivid color splashed behind my eyes. I held my hand out. “Do you mind?”
“That my daughter’s on Vicodin? Certainly,” he said. He shook the bottle again and peered at the date on the label. “And, it would seem, consuming them at a rate of knots. How long have you been taking these?”
I glanced to Sean for support, but he had that closed-up look to his face. He didn’t need to speak for me to see his mind working it out.
“On and off,” I said bluntly, “since I was shot.”
“I see. Naturally, you are aware that Vicodin is addictive if taken long term.”
“Of course I am,” I said, aiming for haughtiness but not making it much past defensive instead. “I don’t use them regularly—just when I need to. When my leg’s bad.” Like now. Give me the damn bottle!
“Were you taking them the day you passed your physical?” Sean asked suddenly, and the unexpected coolness of the question took me by surprise. Our closeness in the car, our solidarity, suddenly evaporated in the face of his veiled accusation.