She opened her hand to reveal a pool of greasy clown’s red, a poor man’s stigmata.
“Messy child,” Jonah said. “I got something pretty for you. Let’s forget the crayon and the third degree. You want to look pretty for our trip? Prettier? You’ve always been the prettiest girl on the planet.”
She smiled. Wiped her palm on her pants.
“Let’s clean up that hand. Then we’ll get you pretty.” He led her to the back room where he lifted the trunk’s lid.
She sucked in a breath and her eyes sparkled when she saw her yellow dress.
Jonah smoothed his palms over the dress, its wool soft beneath the hand. How long he’d looked for a warm dress that would not itch, Sally’s soft child skin so sensitive, so easily rashed. Of three big-girl dresses in the shop in town Sally had preferred this one, and its matching boucle coat. Her little-girl taste so odd. So old-fashioned. That of an elderly woman from a time long before her own. As if she—
He pressed his palms onto the dress. The odor of mothballs potent, odor of the forgotten.
He lifted the dress up to display to her.
Her face lit up.
“Mine,” she said.
“Yours,” he said.
She reached a hand for it.
“Feel it,” he said.
Her chapped fingers worked the wool as she pulled the dress to her cheek.
She eyed the matching coat from the trunk. The coat hem frayed. Mice had been at it. How had that happened with the trunk shut tight, damn it? He closed his eyes to calm himself. He would not sabotage this precious moment.
“See,” he said. “They match.”
“Mine,” she said.
“Yes, yes, yours.”
He searched the trunk, found tights. A tiny tank top. A hat and scarf. The perfect outfit for starting fresh.
“Put them on. I’ll leave you be. You’ll wear them on our new adventure. I’ve waited a long time for this.”
She nodded.
“We’ll have to get real food too,” he said. “Canned sardines and smoked pike won’t suffice. We’ll stock up on your favorite: mac ’n’ cheese. You like that, right?”
She nodded.
“I’ll be outside the door. Get dressed, sweetie.”
He stood outside the door, looked around the cabin, looked for the first time in the years he’d been up here. A shack. A sixteen-by-sixteen-foot inhabitance of cobwebbed timbers and sagged plank flooring, of tattered shades drawn across windows opaque from woodstove smoke. A countertop soiled with mouse droppings. The pong of earth and wet wood. The culmination of his days. A trunk of clothes. A drawer of photos. A heart hardened to quartz by the pressures of grief and unknowing. Dark, dank, cold, lifeless. Every day, every moment he’d carried his wife and daughter with him and wondered.
The world had pressed on. Not lost a breath for him. He’d been washed ashore on a barren, desolate island.
But now. He had her. He felt like some amphibious creature who’d lain under the earth’s dark cool mud to survive an Ice Age now, finally, in retreat. He was slow and dumb to the ways of a new world. The bright light of the day pained his eyes, but his face warmed as he pushed up through the muck.
A wail from behind the door startled him.
Jonah tossed open the door to see her cowered in a corner, pointing at the trunk.
“What?” he said, kneeling in front of her. “What is it, sweetie?”
She trembled. “Spi-der.”
“I don’t see it. It’s gone now,” he said.
“No.”
“You scared it. You’re okay now, sweetie. I won’t let a spider hurt you.”
She reached up and hugged him tight, pressed herself to him, whimpering. He clung to her, embraced her, finally, her warmth warming him. “You’re okay.” He let her go and looked at her.
She’d put on the dress. It was lovely, and even lovelier on her.
“You like it?” he said.
She nodded.
“Your shoes are somewhere too. When we get away, find another town, I’ll buy you more new clothes. For our trip. But I can’t take you to town with me to get supplies,” he said. “I can’t risk you being seen. You’ll be good here, stay put, if I leave for a bit?”
She shook her head so hard her face blurred, and he worried she’d break her neck.
He took her by the shoulders. “Stop that. If you’re seen, they’ll take you. Do you want that?”
She shook her head.
“I’ll be back before dark. I’ll be as quick as I can, and I’ll get the woodstove going before I leave. You’ll be warm. You can color. I’ll bring back coloring books. I’ll bring back a couple stuffies. Ed the elephant. Yes? Maybe a favorite book.” And the old drawings, he thought.
She shook her head.
“You want to be together?” he said.
She nodded.
“Then I have to get our supplies, food and clothes, and fuel up the truck, alone, without risking you being seen and taken away.”
He stood, put his coat on.
“No!” she shrieked.
It was no use. He couldn’t leave her. He’d get two steps out on the porch and she’d lunge after him or, worse, she’d go after him too late and lose herself again in the woods. Yet, he couldn’t risk her being seen in town.
There was one possibility. He did not like it.
“We’ll wait until dark,” he said. “But when we get to town, you have to stay in the truck, under the blanket. You can’t come into the stores. You can’t look out the truck window when I am inside the stores, can’t make a peep. Because—”
“I won’ peep.”
“Promise.”
She nodded.
“Okay. We’ll wait for dark.”