“So?” Olivia asked, coming toward me.
I nodded at the boy beneath the beach umbrella who was openly staring at us. “I see you made a friend.”
“I’m fine, by the way,” Olivia snapped, ignoring my comment. “No one managed to snatch me off the side of the road while you were gone.”
I looked down the road, which showed few signs of life. “Liv, of course you’re fine.”
“What’s going on with the car?”
I repeated what Jerrod Ellis, brother of Raymond and sole proprietor of J & E Automotive, had told me, with all the gravity of a surgeon notifying the family. “It’s the transmission.”
Olivia said, “That’s bad, right? The transmission?”
I nodded.
“I mean, expensive,” she clarified.
“It’s not your job to worry about that.”
“I worry about everything, remember?”
“Not this,” I told her. “This one is solely my territory.”
A new transmission, Jerrod Ellis had informed me, wiping his hands against his work pants, would cost a thousand at the least. A rebuilt transmission was cheaper, but would take longer—it would be a day before he could get the parts from Rawlins. It was our only real option, save for abandoning the trip entirely and settling down in Lyman—which may have been the fate of the drivers of the rusted-out cars at the front of the property. When I leaned against the counter to sign the triplicate form, the handle of the Colt had dug into my paunch. If it wasn’t for Olivia, I would have been on the next bus out of Lyman, Oberlin in my sights.
“So.” Olivia dug in the dirt with the toe of her combat boot. “Now what?”
“Now we settle in. We’re going to be here for a couple days, at least.”
“Days?” Olivia echoed doubtfully, casting a glance down the street. I could see what she was thinking—a couple of days here?
“It’s okay. We’re not in any hurry.” Saying this, I almost convinced myself. What were a few more days, after I’d been waiting four years? Robert Saenz had a few more days of life, liberty, and the pursuit of whatever happiness he could find at the bottom of a pill bottle.
“I guess.” She looked down at the small mountain of dirt she had displaced. It was kind of her not to point out that our options were extremely limited.
While Olivia unloaded her belongings from the trunk, I sat in the driver’s seat, pretending to gather a few bits of trash. I ran a hand beneath the seat to where I’d stashed the six bullets, and one came loose, dropping into the palm of my hand. I froze.
“We’ll need the laundry bag, right?” Olivia called.
“Right.”
There was no time to retape the cartridge, so I slid it into the pocket of my jeans, where it made a small clink against my loose change. I looked up to see Olivia balancing her pillow on top of her suitcase. The boy she had been talking to earlier was still staring at us from his seat behind a rickety folding table. I nodded to him.
“You need a ride?” he called. “I could take you to the motel. That’s my truck.”
Olivia looked at me.
“We’d appreciate it,” I called, and he ambled over to help us with our bags.
“I’m Sam Ellis,” he said, shaking my hand. “That’s my dad you were talking to, Jerrod. Well, stepdad.” Even if there wasn’t a biological connection, Sam had the same confident handshake. He loaded our bags into the back of his pickup in two fluid movements. Since he barely came up to my shoulder, I realized I’d probably mistaken him for being younger than he actually was. Up close, he looked more like twenty than Olivia’s age.
“You’re just going to leave everything out there?” Olivia asked, indicating the card tables.
Sam shrugged. “Not a lot of theft around here. And not too many suspects, either.”
Olivia pressed up against me as she had in the tow truck, her knees angled to avoid the gearshift and, I suspected, Sam Ellis. She braced herself against me as we made the few turns and I flinched, hoping she hadn’t noticed the hard body of the Colt.
What the hell was I doing, riding around with my daughter, a young man and a gun in the middle of nowhere? With every moment that passed, what I had long suspected was becoming incontrovertibly true: there were two kinds of people in the world, and I was the kind that didn’t like guns. I was no Zach Gaffaney, comfortably at home amid dozens of loaded weapons. With Olivia’s body bumping up against mine, the gun felt like a huge mistake. Only a giant red Bozo wig or one of those flowing black capes worn by some of Olivia’s friends, the Visigoths, would have made me feel more conspicuous right then. Yes, I’d determined that in order to do what I was going to do, I needed a gun—but actually having one made me feel less, not more, safe. I might as well have had sticks of dynamite strapped to my chest.
“So, you’re going to be in town for a few days, then?” Sam asked, startling us out of our silence. I’d been staring out the window, noticing again the restaurants I’d spotted earlier, a small convenience store, window displays in need of some updating. The question, I knew, wasn’t directed toward me.
“I think so,” Olivia said, looking down at her lap. She was rolling the hem of her sweatshirt back and forth between two fingers.
“Maybe, um...” Sam began, and then stopped. I glanced at him; his entire neck and face were flushed as red as a sunburn. “I mean if...maybe...”
His voice trailed off, and the pickup slowed for a turn into the parking lot of The Drift Inn. I counted eight rooms in a single row, backing up against a field of scrub brush that would soon break away into tumbleweeds. I tried to pretend that this field was very interesting, that it required my attention and concentration. The truck was in Park now, the engine idling, but still Sam hadn’t found a way to finish his sentence.
I expected Olivia to have some excuse at the ready, since she could surely see where this conversation was leading. But then I realized she was looking up at me, expecting me to say something. I cleared my throat, choosing my words. He seemed like a nice enough kid, and I didn’t want to crush him too flat.
But Olivia surprised me. Quietly, so that I almost couldn’t hear, she said, “I would love to.”