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2
Tessa
Mason reached for the dial on the radio and spun it until the frustration of the silence made him fall back to the seat. He stared out the window with vacant eyes focused on nothing. Tessa noticed, but she was too bone tired to suggest that they sing.
There was still someone else’s blood drying on the back of her neck. The messy bun she’d thrown together this morning was coming undone and she kept wiping the stray curls from her eyes. Her wrists still hurt like they were tied. Emily hiccupped in her sleep, her head resting on Tessa’s lap, exhausted from all the tears she’d cried.
“Do you want me to drive?” Robin whispered, breaking the stunned silence they’d fallen into.
“I’m okay.” Tessa straightened her shoulders and tightened the grip on the wheel. She stole another quick glance at Mason before focusing on the road. “Can you do me a favor though and reach under your seat for the atlas? I want to stay off the freeways, so I need you to look for the safest route through these mountains.”
Robin pushed her sunglasses up off her bruised face and slid them through her hair like a headband as she spread the road atlas across her lap. “So… Do you remember when I said I don’t have much to offer you?”
“I told you, you’ve done more than enough.” Tessa’s voice hitched in her throat, remembering the fear on her kids’ faces and Robin clinging to them as she held them back from the chaos. Was it only an hour ago? Every mile they drove made it seem more distant and unreal. How could that have happened so fast?
“Okay.” Robin nodded as she stared at the pages. “Remember you said that when I tell you I don’t know how to read a map.”
Tessa let off the gas and stepped on the break, the trauma from the day pushing her closer to the edge. “You’re kidding me, right?”
Robin grinned sheepishly and handed the large booklet to Tessa. “Like I said, I can drive.”
“How do you…” Emily stirred on Tessa’s lap and she lowered her voice to a whisper. “How do you not know how to read a map? I thought you said you hiked a lot.”
Robin grimaced, pulling her useless phone from her back pocket and putting it on the dashboard as an offering. “They did invent something called GPS, but apparently the sun doesn’t like that app.”
A giggle escaped from Tessa’s lips, humor breaking the stoic façade she was desperately clinging to, and then her body began to shake as tears filled her eyes.
“Mom?” Mason cried. It hurt too much to see his face contort in pain like that. She pulled his head to her chest, carefully so as not to wake Emily, and kissed his soft brown hair.
“It’s okay, buddy,” she whispered. “Everything is fine.” Tessa met Robin’s eyes across the bench seat and Robin reached out to touch her shoulder.
“Bad joke?” She forced a smile.
“The worst.” Tessa bit her lip as the emotions ran through her, draining all feeling until she was left with a numb and empty ache. But she couldn’t dwell on it for long. The truck was still running and burning gas. Her kids needed her to move.
She thumbed through the pages of the atlas until she got to Southern California. There were so many cities, so many freeways, they were trapped by too many people. For as long as she lived, she never wanted to encounter another group of hostile strangers again. Focus. She willed her heart to slow down as she traced the paths they could take with her finger. They’d have to head southeast, deeper into the desert, but it was the safest way.
Arthur’s paper was in her back pocket. A silent reminder that there were still good people left in this world. She pulled it out and then studied the addresses with instructions to get to each house as she found the towns on the maps, flipping between California, Nevada, and Idaho.
“You genius crayon eater.” She breathed a sigh of relief as she reached over to open the console in the dashboard and dug around for a pen.
“Is this good news?” Robin asked anxiously, leaning over Mason’s head to read the page.
“Better than good.” Tessa paused with the pen positioned above the map as a worried thought snaked its way into her mind. What if this is some kind of trap or sick joke? She shook her head, willing the paranoia to be quiet. Arthur had gone out of his way to help them and Sally was an angel on earth with a frighteningly good aim. She trusted their kindness.
Besides, the gas tank was only half full.
Tessa circled the locations on the map and then handed the booklet back to Robin as she put the truck in drive.
“We’re on the 79,” she said, continuing down the two-lane road. “We need to take State Route 22 to HWY 86, then cut down the back way to Niland. Just tell me how many miles it is until each turn off.”
Robin panicked as she searched through the clusters of lines on the page. “How am I supposed to do that without a ruler?”
Tessa sighed and pulled her hand off the wheel, stretching her fingers wide. “Use the lines of your thumb and measure it against the main key.”
Robin nodded with false confidence. “I can do that. What’s a key?”
“Seriously?” Tessa’s jaw dropped.
