I nod.
“How old is she?”
My heart races. There’s no way he has pieced everything together after one minute of observation in the store. Impossible, impossible. I consider lying, just in case.
“I’m eight,” Finch says from the back seat.
He takes a sip from his Styrofoam cup, winces at the coffee’s heat. “Girl her size ought to be in a booster seat, you know.”
“Yes, sir. I took it out last week and forgot to put it back in.”
“Well, don’t forget next time. It’s for her own safety,” he says. “Not to mention it’s the law.”
“Yes, sir. Will do. Thank you.”
He steps back from the truck. “All right. You folks get on home.”
* * *
As I turn on the ignition, my head is pounding and I can feel the panic swelling at me hard, a choking sensation that tightens and tightens.
Breathe.
I remove the lid from the canteen and take a swig.
“What’s a booster seat?” Finch asks, as we pull out of the gas station.
“You shouldn’t have talked to that police officer,” I tell her. “I told you don’t talk to anyone, no matter what.”
“Do you think Walt Whitman’s okay?”
Sometimes she does that, ignores what I say, changes the subject. “Finch.”
“Well, he asked a question, and you didn’t answer. He was just standing there.”
“I’m serious, Finch. I need to know that when I tell you something, I can trust you to listen.”
“All right,” she mutters. On the fogged-up window, she draws a heart and writes her name.
I make a left and then a right and then keep on driving fast, six miles of road that coils and rolls, the dust kicking up high behind me. When I come to the gate I climb out, unlock it, pass through, lock it. We pull into the yard and I turn off the engine and rest my head against the wheel.
“You all right, Cooper?”
I nod and climb out of the truck, and a sense of relief and exhaustion hit me hard. “We made it,” I tell her as she hops down from the back seat, and she puts her hands on her hips and grins. I walk to her side of the vehicle and wipe her name off the window.
She bolts to the back of the Bronco and surveys the heap of gray plastic bags. “Just look at all the stuff.”
It takes hours to unload all the supplies. First we carry everything to the cabin. Once everything’s in, I move the Bronco, parking it behind the woodshed so it’s hidden. Just in case. Then we have to sort the items. Walt Whitman gets underfoot the whole time, lacing between our feet, his little tail high in the air. Finch unpacks the bags, examining the contents, reading the labels.
“Ritz crackers,” she says, holding the red and blue box in her hands. “These look good.”
“They are. They’re sort of buttery and crumbly.”
“Cheerios,” she reads. “Look at the little bee. I’m keeping the box once we’re done with these. I could cut out the bee and attach fishing line.” She waves the box around. “Hang it from one of the beams in the loft. It’ll look just like a bee, flying around.”
“You can pick one thing to try now,” I call to her, hauling a load to the root cellar. “We can’t open everything at once, or stuff will get stale. So, look things over and pick one.”
At last, she lines up her top five choices on the table: Ritz crackers, honey buns, pretzel rods, peach cups, Lay’s potato chips. She eventually decides on the honey buns.
Finch tries on all her clothes—a lengthy endeavor. First, we haul everything back to the bedroom, then she tries on each item and parades out to the main room, where I’m fixing a late lunch. Everything fits, thankfully. She’s particularly tickled with the pink gloves and wears them the rest of the day.
As we organize all the stuff and set everything in its right spot, such a sense of satisfaction comes over me that I start to whistle, and then Finch joins in, too. There’s a lightness to our work because despite the hiccups along the way—the chatty lady at Walmart, the snooping old man at the truck, Sheila and the sheriff at the gas station—we made it. We’re safe.
TEN
“Tell me about my mother,” Finch says, settling into bed, pulling the covers to her chin. On occasion she asks, and because I don’t have the heart to refuse her, I force myself to think of her. Cindy.
I never asked Lincoln for this, for stories, but there were nights when I could feel my own mother’s absence, the longing for her cold and palpable, and I wanted to think of her, imagine her there with me in my small bedroom with its Star Wars poster and crate of Matchbox cars. I wanted a story. I would’ve asked Lincoln for one, a memory—I remember thinking of it, but I knew that she was mad at my mother, maybe even more than I was. She’d been clear about that from the start.