CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

By the time the dogs down the road barked, the dishes were clean and dripping by the sink. Grandma exchanged a glance with Reg and walked out to the barn. Reg2 and the six trainees trailed her.

Reg climbed the hayloft ladder behind her. She raised the periscope and took a long look.

“It’s Team 2,” she barked. “They’re alone, and they’re coming fast.” She twisted to look down at them. “I thought you said they were stranded on your Earth.”

“We took their craft,” Reg said, “and they said they couldn’t communicate with your IA without it.”

“Probably they missed a check-in, and IA went after them,” Reg2 said.

“Damn it,” Reg said, clambering back down the ladder. “Damn it, damn it, damn it.”

“Okay,” Reg2 said. “Eleanor, me, and myself made a plan last night for any unforeseen emergency. This is it.” He hustled them out to Eddie2’s truck. “Eddie, we’re heading east. We’re going to drive fast and leave tracks.” Eddie2 grinned and swung into the driver’s seat. Eyeliner Trevor hauled himself into the bed, but Rosa2 looked, stricken, at Rosa. They always knew they couldn’t stay together, but neither thought they’d have to separate so soon.

“You’re taking my car,” Grandma said, pressing the keys into Rosa’s hand.

She’s driving?” Eddie said.

“Reg says your reactions are fastest, but she’s less likely to take a chance. Fair assessment?”

Rosa took the keys and walked toward the black Mercedes parked by the house.

“Yeah,” Eddie said sullenly. “I guess that’s fair. But crap.”

“Not my respectable engineer car,” Grandma said. “They’ll expect to find that here. You’re taking my hobby car.”

She pulled the tarp off a hulking shape in the shadows, revealing a red minivan with a dented back bumper.

“Double crap,” Eddie said. “No sports car?”

Grandma shook her head. “Did I have this in your world?”

“Nah. You drove the same car for like thirty years. Not a Mercedes.”

“Ouch,” Grandma said.

“Are you coming?” Rosa asked Grandma.

“No. I need to put those dishes away fast, before they can get in and count them. I’ll tell them they were here,” she said nodding toward the truckload of people from her world. “I’ll think of some reason.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Reg shouted.

Eddie2 started his engine, pulled the truck up to his grandma, and gave her a hug through the window. He cast a glance toward Eddie, riding shotgun in the van, and jerked his chin to him. Grandma leaned in and kissed Eddie2’s cheek, then smacked the truck roof and he accelerated away from the farmhouse, bouncing down a dirt road between cornfields.

She came around to Eddie’s window and crouched down to look at him. Rosa could see him in the side mirror, and he wore such a look of anguish that she had to turn away. This was why Grandma didn’t want him to drive. She knew leaving would gut him and that he would need a minute to recover. A minute they didn’t have.

“Eddie,” she said softly. “Wherever I am, whichever I am, I’m loving you.”

“Yeah,” he said thickly, like he’d cut his tongue on the word and had a mouthful of blood. “Love you, Gram.”

She grabbed his hand and held his fingers for a moment, then Rosa pulled forward and their hands fell apart and Eddie stared in the side mirror the whole time they drove down the back road, until they turned right and right again to come up on the paved road a mile behind Team 2.

Rosa drove fast, hands loose on the wheel, loving the power, before she remembered it was a minivan. It should have felt like driving a tub of butter.

“I think she modified the engine.”

“Yeah,” Trevor said from the seat behind Eddie.

Rosa was nearing a stop sign on the highway, so she twisted to catch Reg’s eye. “The others are luring them east. That means we go west?”

“Yeah,” Reg said, pointing across the intersection to their road, stretching out before them. “I don’t know what we’re going to do, but I know where we need to do it. We’re heading back to where we landed—to alien NASA.”

Rosa pulled smoothly across the intersection and accelerated hard toward Iowa. It was high noon. There were no shadows. It was as though the world was perfectly symmetrical, and you couldn’t tell if you were real or just looking in a mirror.