Remember to Forget (10 page)

Alarm rose in her throat when the vehicle slowed, lurched, then started backing toward her.

Chapter Twelve

T
he Greyhound ground to a stop at the west edge of Salina, Kansas. Judging by the short trip around the outskirts of the city, it was a small town. Weary and feeling as if she were painted in dust, Maggie waited until the other passengers got off before she gathered what was left of her popcorn and made her way down the narrow aisle.

At the door, she peered over the bus driver’s shoulder, thankful that his watch had a giant face. Almost four o’clock. She hadn’t bothered to put her watch on before she’d left the apartment. Over the miles since then, she’d learned to be unobtrusive in reading other people’s watches.

The asphalt practically sizzled through the soles of her tennis shoes when she stepped onto it. Shading her eyes, she entered the terminal—which wasn’t much
more than a convenience store—and bought a can of Diet Coke from a vending machine.

A man wearing cowboy boots and a leathery complexion tipped his Stetson to her as she exited the building, but no one paid much attention when she headed for the highway. Traffic zipped past as she walked along the graveled shoulder.

She walked half a mile or so to an overpass. From there she looked west, her eyes taking in the sun-scorched landscape. The corner of her mouth quirked in a sardonic smile. She’d landed smack-dab in the middle of a
Little House on the Prairie
movie set. The terrain wasn’t pancake flat the way she’d always heard Kansas described, but the sparseness of trees on the gently rolling hills extended the vista for what seemed like a hundred miles.

She moved to the left side of the road and crossed the overpass, hugging the dented guardrail and praying no one tried to add another dent while she was there.

Every driver who passed waved or honked until she checked to see if she had toilet paper trailing her shoe or something. Was it that unusual to see a girl walking along the road in Kansas?

The last of the Coke was warm and syrupy by the time she drained the can. Sweat trickled down the bridge of her nose, stinging her eyes, and her blouse was plastered to her back.

But soon the sun dipped to the horizon, and a breeze fanned her face. Behind her the town had disappeared save for a row of grain elevators peeking over the sphere of the earth. On one side of her was a field of golden plumes she guessed to be wheat. Wasn’t that what Kansas was famous for? And on the other stretched miles of rocky pastureland. The grassland was fenced in with barbed wire strung through tilted posts of gnarled wood, or in some places, thick posts carved from porous yellow stone.

A pickup barreled over the hill behind her, spraying sandy dust as it passed. Alarm rose in her throat when the vehicle slowed, lurched,
then started backing toward her. She kept walking, and the truck shifted gears again and crawled along beside her.

A man who looked remarkably like the man with the Stetson back at the bus terminal rolled down his window and leaned out, resting a tanned elbow on the window frame. “You need a ride?”

“No,” she said. “I’m fine.”

“You have car trouble?”

“I’m just . . . walking. Thanks.” She quickened her pace.

He shook his head as if he thought she were crazy but put the truck in gear and drove on.

A few vehicles whizzed past, not seeming to notice her. But she hadn’t gone half a mile when another truck stopped, and another tanned farmer in a cowboy hat offered her a ride. Maggie was starting to feel as though she was a player in some sort of bizarre
Stepford Wives
–type movie.

Again she declined. Did these people really think she was such a fool that she’d accept a ride with a man—a complete stranger—on a deserted country road?

But as twilight pulled a cloak over the landscape she started to wonder if she
was
a fool. Whirling in the road, she looked back toward Salina. A haze of light rode the horizon where the town was sprawled. She’d probably walked thirty or forty city blocks, and there wasn’t a building or a light in sight, save for a couple of white grain elevators that occasionally peeked over the rolling terrain. Maybe she would be better off going back into town for the night.

Go west.

That voice again—or whatever it was. She couldn’t go back.

She traversed a narrow bridge, and when she came to the next crossroad, she decided to turn off the main highway and walk south. Maybe there wouldn’t be so much traffic on a side road. She stopped short, seeing two small wooden crosses jutting up from the prairie grasses in the ditch. She scrambled down the gully and stooped to inspect them closer. The crosses, one slightly larger than the other, were
carefully constructed, and Maggie could tell they’d once been varnished to a sheen, though now they showed signs of being left to the elements. There was evidence on the ground around the monuments—dried flower petals and a bit of tattered sun-faded ribbon—that someone had tended them at some point. Like a grave. Someone’s pets, perhaps? Or did they denote the scene of a fatal accident? She shivered and climbed back up to the road.

At the next intersection, she turned west again. The road was asphalt-paved for half a mile or so, then turned to gravel and sand. As she stopped to shake a pebble out of her shoe, it struck her that, for the first time all summer, she had put her tennis shoes on before she left the apartment in New York that fated morning. Tennis shoes
and
socks. A little chill snaked up her spine at the fluke. What if she had been wearing her flip-flops the way she usually did when she went out on a quick errand? As it was, she could almost feel the blisters raising on her heels. If she’d been in sandals, her feet would have been torn to shreds. She’d never have made it this far on foot.

She trudged on, her muscles aching with the effort of the miles. The utter silence was broken by a murmuring
whoosh whoosh
as she came upon wheat fields on either side of the road. The bushy stalks danced with the breeze, an ocean of golden waves rolling around her as far as she could see. She had never experienced such space! It made her feel small. Yet an odd sense of freedom had started to well up in her chest.

The sunlight ebbed further and shadows of memory clouded her thoughts . . .

Kevin, telling her she couldn’t have coffee with the sweet woman who lived in the apartment next door.

Kevin, ordering her what to make for supper, how he wanted it cooked, and what time he wanted it served.

Kevin, forbidding her from taking a job.

Kevin, making her step on the bathroom scales every morning, and putting her on a diet if she gained half a pound. She’d always tried to
count her blessings that she had a personal trainer of sorts.

Now, out here in this wide-open territory that seemed like a foreign country, her brain seemed to clear, and the truth of her situation unfolded like a clearly marked map. How had she ever allowed herself to come under his control? What was it about him . . . ?

She stopped dead in the road, stirring up little whirls of dust around her feet. No. That was the wrong question. What was it about
her
? That’s what she
should
be asking.

She plodded on another mile, weariness almost overpowering her. She came to a little turnoff in the road that led to a fenced pasture. Slumping against a pale stone post, she rested for a while before hauling herself up again. The road ahead of her was covered by a canopy of trees, leafy branches entwined overhead. They rustled as the wind picked up. The tunnel they formed was almost pitch-black inside, reminding her that night would fall in a few minutes. She quickened her pace. It wouldn’t be good to be caught out here after dark.

As if to confirm that thought, an eerie howl split the quiet evening. It was probably some farmer’s dog, but a sign a few miles back, before she’d turned off the main road, had said it was twenty miles to Coyote. She didn’t want to think about how that town got its name.

The last crescent sliver of sun slipped below the prairie and, as if the sunset had triggered some switch, a chorus of insects started in. Cicadas? Crickets? She didn’t know, but within seconds, their
chirrup chirrup
rose to an earsplitting crescendo.

Maggie walked on. She didn’t know what else to do.

After exiting the canopied mile, she looked up. The sky overhead was inky black, but that only showed off the pinpoints of light to better advantage. She traced the Big Dipper, amazed at how clearly it was outlined in the Milky Way. She had seen starry displays like this in the movies, but she’d always assumed they were achieved through some genius of special effects. The spectacle of lights took her breath away.

She’d lost her sense of direction, but at a rise in the road, she spotted
another cluster of lights twinkling in the distance. These were close to the horizon and obviously man-made. Out here it was hard to tell how far away they were, but as the night grew ever blacker, she took courage in their presence. They gave her something to go toward, a goal.

If she could just make it to those lights, everything might turn out okay.

She glanced furtively over her shoulder and was blinded by headlights cresting the hill behind her.

Chapter Thirteen

T
he rumble of approaching tires on the gravel stilled the chirping crickets. To Maggie, it seemed she’d been walking for days. The night air made her skin clammy. Her guiding, distant lights were ever more elusive—a cruel mirage that teased her with hope before they receded again behind the thousandth hill.

She glanced furtively over her shoulder and was blinded by headlights cresting the hill behind her. In that moment she made up her mind. She didn’t care if the driver was another lone cowboy or Jack the Ripper. If he stopped and offered her a ride, she would take it. She moved closer to the ditch on the left side of the road and slowed her pace, walking between the edge of the ditch and the ruts that had been worn deep into the road’s surface by decades of eastbound vehicles—or perhaps even by covered wagons.

In the hours she’d been trudging along this Kansas road, the centuries had seemed to fold back on themselves. Now, strangely, she wouldn’t have been any more surprised to see a stagecoach pull up behind her than she was to see the old wood-paneled station wagon that crept to a stop at her side.

She stopped in the road, waiting. The window rolled down in a series of jerky movements. The interior lights came on and a young woman’s head appeared. At the same time the back window also slid down. Two matching curly blond heads bobbed into sight, then a third, a spike-haired boy she guessed to be about six.

“Hey!” the woman yelled. “Everything okay?”

The children echoed her question and she turned to shush them.

Maggie approached the car.

The front window jerked halfway up again. Maggie backed off a couple of steps. She, of all people, understood the woman’s caution.

“I could use a ride.”