Once everyone was done, Cornelia announced, “I’m staying in the back.”
They pulled out onto the road, and an odd feeling came over Rae Lynn. The last time she’d rode in this spot, Warren had been driving them somewhere. Feeling nostalgic, she pretended it was Warren, and that the past months hadn’t happened. If Del thought her behavior standoffish, so be it. She couldn’t help how she felt, although he was just as quiet, as if he too were preoccupied. He stopped at a store advertising, WE SERVE HOT HAM BISCUITS! He bought for all three of them, and the owner somehow had real coffee too, served in paper cups. They stopped for gas around dinnertime in Dillon, South Carolina. Under a small tent beside the station, a man was boiling peanuts in a kettle pot hung over a fire under a big oak tree. They got bags of these along with cold Pepsis. They leaned against the truck where it was parked in the shade of the building and began eating. Side by side, with Rae Lynn in the middle, they talked quiet, mostly about the subtle changes to the landscape since they’d left Georgia. The level grassy savannas had turned a bit hillier as they traveled farther north and east, but the air held the same sticky feeling. A slight breeze came every so often and made the small, multicolored flags the owner placed around the station flutter in the breeze.
Rae Lynn watched Del take a peanut, put the whole thing in his mouth, suck the juice from the shell, then hold it longways and use his front teeth to pop it open. He tossed the soft beans in his mouth, took a swig of Pepsi, and did it again. She was mesmerized because Warren used to eat boiled peanuts the same exact way.
Cornelia was careful to check that no one was around before taking the hat off her head and rubbing her hand over the stubs of hair left on her scalp.
“I could get used to this. You men are lucky. This is much cooler, and easier than long hair.”
Rae Lynn said, “Sure is. Makes me want to cut mine again, only shorter. Like yours.”
Del was quick with his reaction. He said, “No, don’t.”
Rae Lynn couldn’t imagine feeling any hotter, but the way he looked at her right then was like the time she’d caught a fever, like she was baking from the inside out. She glanced down at her bag of peanuts. He fumbled for the right words and finally assembled a coherent sentence.
“I mean, I kind a like how it is now. Growing out and all.”
She felt Cornelia’s elbow nudge her in the ribs. She nudged back, harder. It didn’t matter what he liked. Any talk of longer hair brought to mind cutting hers off and how she’d scattered the strands over Warren’s grave. The boiled peanuts lost their appeal as Rae Lynn was once again thrown backward, thinking how only a few months before, her daily routine had been pondering what she might fix for supper, washing clothes, tending the garden, and any one of the other many things that consumed her and Warren’s days. She would cut her hair again if she wanted, no matter what Del Reese liked. They finished the peanuts and drinks, wadded up the bags, and threw them in a barrel intended for trash.
Rae Lynn changed the subject and said, “How much farther, you reckon?”
Del said, “We’re almost there.”
Cornelia waved a hand in front of her face in an attempt to stir the air.
She said, “It’s too hot to ride squished together. I’m gonna ride in the back again the rest of the way.”
Rae Lynn wished she wouldn’t. It left her alone with Del, and while he’d not asked her anything this morning, she was aware he’d looked her way more times than she’d care for, as if he was on the verge of saying something. Small talk with him wasn’t what she wanted. She could imagine the questions that might come, what had she done before Swallow Hill, what was her childhood like, what about her parents, why had she done what she’d done . . .
She grabbed Cornelia’s arm. “Let me ride in the back. I need to stretch out. My back hurts.”
It didn’t, but she had to think of something.
Cornelia said, “Are you sure?”
Rae Lynn tried to joke. “Yes, I’m sure my back’s hurting.”
Of course Del wanted to help her, and she had to let him, or appear as if she wasn’t telling the truth by being nimble enough to climb up on her own. When he took hold of her upper arm to give her assistance, she thought he held it a second too long, but she didn’t want to seem rude by pulling away. She sat sideways against a wheel hub, so she could see where they were going, and where they’d been. She observed how Del and Cornelia got along, laughing much of the time and pointing things out to each other. She wondered what they talked about. Del slowed down at a crossroads, stopped, and got out.