The truck lurched forward and onto the glazed driveway. The tail end shimmied left, then right, and then straightened out. Her mother pressed lightly on the gas, then the brake, and slowly inched forward.
“Where are we going?” the girl asked as they moved slowly up the long driveway.
“Shhh, I need to focus,” her mother said. The rain was coming down in icy slashes and a murky fog covered the windshield. She found the headlights and the windshield wipers and that helped a bit. At the top of the drive, she had to make a decision. Turn right or turn left. She had no idea where she was or where to go. She took a deep breath and turned the truck to the right.
The truck kept jerking and sliding and stopping so that the girl’s stomach began to churn. She held tightly to her blanket and hoped she wouldn’t throw up.
Finally, her mother seemed to get the hang of it, and they drove slowly down the road. “Whatever happens,” her mother began, “I want you to keep going. If he shows up, keep running. If we get separated, keep running. Do you understand?” Her mother took another right. The wheels seemed to catch the road easier here, and her mother pressed down on the accelerator. The truck sped up. She glanced over at the girl. “Find somewhere safe. Don’t tell anyone anything. Not your name, my name, not anything until you know you are in a safe place.”
“How will I know if it’s safe?” the girl asked.
“You’ll know,” her mother said. “You’ll know.”
The girl wasn’t so sure. She looked at the road in front of them. They could go anywhere, be anyone they wanted to. Through the headlights, the girl saw a tree. A tree growing right up through the middle of the road. “Mama,” she cried out.
Her mother tried to swing the steering wheel to the right, but the truck still glanced the side of the tree. The girl heard the crunch of metal and the crack of wood, and then the road wasn’t there anymore. Her stomach swayed and the truck bounced and bucked, and suddenly the girl was upside down. She bit her tongue, and blood pooled into her mouth. Her head struck something hard and the truck spun and slid until it came to an abrupt stop.
The girl was upside down in her seat. Her mother was gone. She touched her fingers to her head and they came away red with blood. “Mama?” she called out. There was no response. The windshield was shattered, and through the prism, all the girl could see was white. The air grew colder. With aching fingers, she was able to release her seat belt and she tumbled down with a painful thump. She was sitting where the ceiling should have been. She cried out again for her mother, but all she could hear was the wind crying back at her.
She didn’t know what to do. The pain in her head was nauseating and her fingers and toes burned with cold. Her mother told her to keep going, so that was what she would do. No matter what. One of the truck doors was wedged open and she dizzily crawled through it. All around her were broken pieces of the truck, but her mother was nowhere to be seen. “Mama, where are you?” she called out, but her words were swallowed up by the snow that was falling furiously now.
Tears gathered in her eyes and spilled out onto her cold cheeks. Keep going, she told herself. She stepped forward and immediately slipped to the ground. She crawled on hands and knees until she was atop a little hill. Squinting through the storm, she saw it. Pale and weak, but it was there. She got to her feet, and moving slowly, steadily, the girl headed toward the star.
39
August 2000
The front door slowly opened and Agent Santos assessed the woman standing in front of her. She was as thin as a skeleton; her face was pale and pinched. She looked two steps from death.
“He said you’d be coming,” June said in a raspy voice.
“Where’s Jackson?” Santos asked, her eyes darting around the room.
June sat down wearily in a chair. “He’s my son. I love him,” she said simply.
Santos knew they weren’t getting any help from Jackson Henley’s mother. “You stay with her,” Santos ordered a deputy.
Santos and her team began with a cursory search of the house. Everything was as neat as a pin. Even the basement with its concrete walls and floor was swept clean. There was no sign of Jackson Henley or Becky Allen. Santos returned to the living room where June Henley sat, watching them warily.
The house, so far, was ordinary—it looked like the home of an elderly woman who had married and raised a son there. There were pictures of Jackson at various ages, of June and her husband on their wedding day. But something was missing.