Walk Me Home (27 page)

She slides one arm through the ladder and wraps her arms tightly, so she can’t lose her grip. A moment at a time, her heartbeat calms, and her breathing returns to almost normal. She’s headed west, watching the dark shapes of whittled rocks and giant cactus flash by, dark silhouettes. Now all she has to do is hold on tight. And resist the urge to fall asleep.

She thinks about Jen. Is she sleeping soundly or lying awake worrying? What will Delores say in the morning when it’s clear Carly is gone?

A startling thought descends. Maybe Delores and Alvin will turn Jen over to child protective services. After all, Jen had nobody except an older sister, and then even Carly ran out on her.

But Jen will say it wasn’t like that.

But maybe no one will believe her.

Carly almost lets go, thinking she can make her way back down the tracks in the direction of the Wakapi. Then she realizes they’ve passed a dozen of those little roads. Just like the one Carly came down.

It’s too late to find her way back now.

Seems So Long Ago

NEW MEXICO

Christmas Day

“Christmas is supposed to be a day you wake up early in your warm house and run downstairs in your pj’s to see what’s under the tree with your name on it, damn it.”

“Hmm,” Jen said. “Well. We don’t get that. So let’s go see what we get.”

They’d just woken up shivering in a tent at a KOA campground. Who knew it could get so cold in New Mexico? Carly thought. She’d expected it to be hot. Hotter than Tulare even. But they’d been climbing in elevation.

She’d wanted to ask if their new home was in the mountains. But then she would’ve had to talk to her mom. Or, God forbid, Wade.

“You ready?” she asked Jen.

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

They stepped out into the freezing absolute silence.

Wade and their mom were sleeping in the bed of Wade’s truck, which was parked behind their mom’s car with a big rented trailer
attached. No one moved in or near the cars. No one moved anywhere. Not many people were camping here. Most were home with their families for the holiday. Those who were here were apparently still asleep.

Jen pointed up at the pine trees. “Christmas trees,” she said. Without much enthusiasm. Like it was just a thing she figured might be worth a try.

“I miss Teddy’s millions of dumb decorations,” Carly said.

Jen said nothing.

“Still not speaking to me?” Carly’s mom asked.

They sat at a booth in a cheap roadside pancake restaurant. Carly watched Wade try to find a spot to park his mega-truck, along with the trailer containing most of their stuff. What they still owned, that is. The place they were moving into was small. Or so Carly had been told. Over and over, the whole time they’d packed. They’d had to leave a lot behind.

Thank God he was driving a separate vehicle, Carly thought for about the twentieth time.

“Carly,” Jen said. “It’s Christmas.”

Like that hadn’t gone without saying. But of course Carly got Jen’s point. You can’t not speak to your mother on Christmas. Silently, inwardly, Carly disagreed. Potentially right down to the suggestion that this day deserved to be honored as a Christmas.

A car pulled out of the parking lot, giving Wade a chance to park his long load across three spaces. Too bad, Carly thought. Now he’ll be joining us.

“Wade says we should get there later today,” Carly’s mom said. “So it might not be much of a Christmas morning, but at least we can have a decent dinner. I mean, not a turkey or anything. But at least we can stop and buy a canned ham and some rolls or something. Eat in our new place.”

She stared at Carly and waited. Carly could see it in her peripheral vision. She didn’t look back. Instead she watched Wade pace down the sidewalk to the restaurant door. She could hear the clicking of his boot heels from inside.

“When do we get to open our presents?” Jen asked.

An awkward silence.

Then her mom said, “Little bit of a problem with that.”

Jen sighed. “You were busy moving, and you didn’t get us any. We got yours.”

“No, I got them a long time ago. Weeks ago.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

Carly felt like Jen was half being herself and half channeling Carly. Saying what Carly would have said, but toning down the vitriol in the translation.

Wade sat down at the table. Jen said good morning to him. Carly said nothing and was careful not to look his way.

“I…got you girls gift certificates to your very favorite store,” their mom said.

“Oh,” Jen said. A downbeat “oh.”

Jen had filled in the blanks already. So had Carly. Their very favorite store was, of course, in Tulare.

“You don’t say good morning when I sit down?”

Wade. She heard the darkness in his voice. She could match it to a glare in his eyes from experience. From memory. She did not look up to confirm what she knew.

“Leave the girl alone, Wade. But what we’ll do, we’ll give you girls a little bit of cash. Can’t be much. You know. Things being what they are. But you can go into town—the new town—and get to know the place by looking around and picking yourself out presents. Won’t be anything too big, but then I’ll get my money back on those gift certificates and we’ll have more presents later on.”

“OK,” Jen said.

Carly said nothing. Just watched a woman with a leashed collie let the dog out of the car to sniff around in the parking lot. Watched it lift its leg on a bush.

“This is getting old,” Wade said.

“I told you leave the girl alone, Wade.”

“No. I’m gonna speak my piece here. This is Christmas morning, and your mom just told you what she’s doing to salvage Christmas for you girls in a tight squeeze, and you got nothing to say at all?”

“Wade, butt out. She’s my girl. Not yours. Get off it.”

“Damn her!” Wade pounded the heel of his hand on the table. Hard.

Everybody in the restaurant fell silent. Every neck craned to see. Carly watched the cook come out of the kitchen, a middle-aged man with broad shoulders. He stood watching Wade until it became clear that nothing more was about to happen. Then he shook his head and pushed back through the swinging door.

“Wouldn’t let
my
daughter treat me like that,” Wade said.

“Well, now there’s a surprise. I never would have known that if you hadn’t already told me about a hundred and fifty times. And what do I tell you every time?”

“That I can treat my own daughter how I want, but this one’s yours.”

“Right. Good job listening.”

The waitress appeared at their table, pad and pencil in hand. “Merry Christmas. What’ll you folks have?”

She looked to Jen first.

“Two eggs over well with pancakes, please.”

The waitress turned to Carly next.

“Bacon and scrambled eggs with rye toast. Please. And merry Christmas to you, too.”

“Ah,” Wade said. “It speaks.”

“Enough, Wade,” Carly’s mom said. “I’ll have the short stack. Wade, what do you want, honey?”

“Steak and eggs. Over easy. And a new stepdaughter.”

The waitress pretended to smile. Or tried to, anyway. “Well, I’ll bring you the steak and eggs, anyway.”

She hurried off.

“Steak and eggs?” Carly’s mom turned her irritation fully onto Wade. “Steak and eggs? You just
had
to order the most expensive thing on the menu? I was about to give the girls twenty-five dollars each for Christmas, and you just single-handedly cut it down to twenty.”

“I like steak and eggs. I wanted steak and eggs. Damn it, it’s Christmas, and what have I got here? Steak and eggs isn’t asking so much.”

A few heads turned again.

“Fine, we’ll talk about it later. Just shut up before you get us kicked out of here. Probably the only place open for miles. Maybe the only place open in the state. So shut up and don’t blow this for us.”

The energy around Wade turned so tight and so dark that Carly involuntarily twitched her shoulders as a way of letting it move through her.

Later, after breakfast, as they trudged out through the parking lot together, Wade leaned over close to Carly’s mom and spoke, his voice measured but chilling.

“And you don’t
ever
tell me to shut up again.”

“Oh, my God!” Jen shrieked as they drove through the gate in the white picket fence. Following Wade and the trailer. “You call this
small
?”

Carly looked up. The house was twice the size of their old rental in Tulare.

“This is Wade’s brother’s house,” their mom said. “He’s letting us use the guesthouse until we can get it together to afford something better.”

“Oh,” Jen said.

They stopped behind Wade in the driveway. Wade honked. And waited.

A few minutes later, a man stepped out of the house. Carly figured he was literally Wade’s identical twin.

“Oh, crap,” she whispered to Jen. “Two of him!”

“I heard that.”

Carly caught her mother’s eyes in the rearview mirror, then looked away.

Jen rolled her window down. The air felt light and cold. Carly briefly wondered if it ever snowed here.

She watched Wade walk up to his brother, arms out as if to embrace him. Wade Two, as she’d already named him in her head, stuck his right hand out to shake. But what kind of brothers shake hands? Carly thought. Especially twin brothers. These two, it turned out. Wade dropped his arms and shook.

“Just wanted to say hi,” Wade said. “But we’ll get right out of your hair again. Let you enjoy Christmas in peace.”

“Yeah, that’d be good,” Wade Two said. “It’s not locked.”

Then he turned and walked back into the big house.

“Runs in the family,” Carly whispered to Jen.

“That one I didn’t hear,” her mother said. “But I don’t want you whispering to your sister. I got a good idea I wouldn’t like it.”

“Who’s he going inside to have Christmas with?” Jen asked their mom. “Has he got a whole big family in there?”

“I don’t think so. Wade said his wife and kids left him. I don’t know why he wants to be by himself.”

Carly exchanged a look with Jen but said nothing. Because it all pretty much said itself.

“It’s
one bedroom
?”

Carly blasted the words out to no one in particular. Then, realizing she’d just scraped close to speaking to her mom, she sat on the floor in the corner and said nothing more.

Jen stood in the middle of the one main room, looking around. “So, I’m guessing you guys get the bedroom. Right?”

“Well, of course, honey. You know we need privacy.”

“And we don’t, of course,” Carly barely breathed. It was not meant to be heard by anyone but herself. And it wasn’t.

“Where do
we
sleep?” Jen asked, her tone riding the edge of exasperation.

“Wade’s brother is loaning us a fold-out couch.”

“I have to share a bed with Carly?”

“It won’t kill you, Jen. It’s just for a while.”

“Shit, this ain’t gonna be easy,” Wade said. “We’ll have to put a TV in our bedroom. I’m gonna feel like a prisoner in there, and if I sit out here with these two kids, I’m gonna feel like a whole other kind of prisoner. This place would fit us great if it was just the two of us.”

Jen came and sat on the floor, her hip bumping up against Carly’s. Ducking the gathering storm.

“Well, it’s
not
, Wade. When I met you, did I lie and say I was childless?”

“No, but—”

“Then just shu—” Carly’s mom stopped herself. It was unlike her. But the tone in Wade’s voice when he’d said she was never to tell him to shut up again—that was not easily forgotten. “Let’s just have a nice Christmas,” she said. “Much as we can. What’s left of it.”

“You want to have a nice Christmas? Give those girls their money and send ’em into town. I already need room to breathe.”

“What do you think’ll be open today?”

“I don’t care. They can window-shop.”

“Well, get their bikes out at least. It’s too far to walk.”

“Bikes are buried. All the way at the front end of that trailer.”

“Well, they can’t go into town, then. Can they?”

“I’m gonna go nuts trying to unload with them standing right here. Every place I walk they’ll be right in my way.”