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Jo-Beth looked up, and immediately spotted me. Her mouth dropped open as she pushed back from the table and raced up to me. I stepped back just in time as she got to the door.
“What the fuck is this?!” she yelled at the top of her lungs, eyes racing over my smoke-blackened body.
“Fire. Carter’s ex. Et cetera.”
“Are you okay?” Her hands ran over my skin, checking for cuts and breaks and burns, finding none.
“We’ve gotta go.”
She nodded, suddenly all business, running back to grab her backpack and throw a couple of dollars on the table, before put an arm beneath my underpit and helped me back to the car.
Henry opened the front door and, with Carter’s help, Jo-Beth got me back in the front seat.
“Where the hell are we going?” she asked, climbing into the bed and talking through the window.
“The garage,” Carter explained. “We can’t drive like this out of town.”
“We’re leaving town?!”
My head lolled to her and I explained, “The Airstream burned.”
“Oh my God, is that why you look like this?”
I tilted my head forward, approximating a nod.
“And our stuff inside is gone.” A statement, not a question.
I did another half-nod.
“Well, it was just some clothes,” Jo-Beth said. “At least you are safe.”
She reached in and rubbed my hand and looked at me with tears in her eyes. “And we’re on the run why?”
“Long story.”
She looked at me and asked, “Is this what you were talking about earlier, the story I wasn’t allowed to know?”
“Yuuup.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Well, at least you weren’t exaggerating. That’s something.”
I snorted and she smiled, as I wiped dust off my face while Henry squirmed in his booster seat. Carter’s hand fell reassuringly on my shoulder, its very weight a safety blanket against the outside world.
Had he forgiven me? Better yet, had I forgiven him?
It was a matter for later. Right then, I was pretty focused on, like, surviving.
We pulled up to the garage. The drive hadn’t been long. Even Henry stayed quiet as we all kept our fingers crossed and our eyes searching the road before us. Our heart rates seemed to move in unison.
“We’re here,” Carter announced, as though we hadn’t already deduced as much. “I’m gonna go see if, by some miracle, your car is ready. If not, maybe Big Bob has something I can buy off him.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I do,” he said, turning to face me as he climbed out of the truck. “I absolutely do. Just stay here.”
Carter walked out of my line of sight. This, at last, forced me to sit up. I was anxious to watch his every move, so if he was going to walk to the garage, I was just going to have to get over my wooziness and become upright.
Jo-Beth climbed out of the flat bed and helped me into a sitting position, and Henry’s little fist tapped on my head.
“Are you okay?” he asked, innocent and confused.
“Yeah, little dude, I’m okay.” I most certainly was not, but a six year old didn’t need to know that.
Carter stopped in the middle of the garage, and Big Bob — that old asshole — came out to meet him.
“Yeah, part came early, and I did most of the fixin’,” Big Bob said.
Wait, what?!
“So we can drive it?” I shouted.
Carter sighed, a little exasperated by my unwillingness to just stay put, but shouted back, “Big Bob was in uh… in the mood to do me favors today. I just gotta put the final touches on and we can go.”
That was good enough for me.
I scooted opened the door, and hopped out. Jo-Beth was taking the booster seat out of the truck as Henry stood beside her watching.
“How’d you get the part, Bob?” I asked, strolling — well, limping — up to them, my lungs still burning from oxygen deprivation.
The auto repair owner looked sideways, his cheeks going red. “Figured it was the least I could do, after how I behaved.”
I looked to Carter. “Did you put him up to this?”
Carter shrugged. “Do you care if I did?”
So that was a ‘yes.’ But he was right, I didn’t care.
“Okay,” I said. “Go fix the car and we’ll get the hell out.”
Carter jogged to my rustbucket, which was sitting just around the side of the building.
I began to follow Carter. Jo-Beth and Henry were somewhere close by, but out of my line of sight, and I didn’t have the energy to track them.
Big Bob shouted at me, “So Carter’s leaving town, huh?”
“Dunno.”
“Tell him to pay me back!”
I rolled my eyes. “All right, Bob.”
Old coot. I was clearly injured and unwell and all he could do was ask after some fucking money. Though, frankly, it was better that than our first encounter.
Anxious to be far, far away from Big Bob, I left the garage in disgust and walked around the side, to where Carter was busily repairing the car, sliding his body beneath the vehicle.
