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She felt smart, smug, completely happy with herself. She had outwitted the President of the United States, the Secret Service, and her father. Hail to the Chieftess!
She laughed, delighted
with her own cockiness because it had been so long since she’d felt that way. She rummaged on the seat next to her for the Snickers bar she’d bought, then remembered she’d already devoured it. Her hunger made her laugh again. All her life she’d fantasized about having a curvy body. Maybe she was finally going to get it.
She glanced at herself in the rearview mirror. Even though the old lady’s wig was gone, not one person had recognized her. She had transformed herself into someone blissfully, sublimely ordinary.
A commercial came on the radio. She turned the volume down and began to hum. All morning she’d allowed herself to dawdle along the two-lane highway west of York, Pennsylvania, which happened to be the nation’s first capital and the place where the Articles of Confederation were written. She’d detoured through the small towns that lay along the route whenever she’d wanted. Once she’d pulled off the road to admire a field of soybeans, although she couldn’t help but ponder the complexities of farm subsidies as she leaned against the fence. Then she’d stopped in a ramshackle farmhouse with a sign outside that read ANTIQUES and browsed through the dust and junk for a wonderful hour. As a result, she hadn’t traveled far. But she had nowhere specific to go, and it was glorious being absolutely aimless.
It might be foolish to feel so happy when the President was undoubtedly using all the power and might of the United States government to track her down, but she couldn’t help herself. She wasn’t naive enough to believe she could outwit them forever, but that made each moment more precious.
The commercial ended and Tom Petty began to sing. Nealy laughed again, then joined in. She was free-falling.
Mat was the world’s biggest chump. Instead of being behind the wheel of his Mercedes convertible with only the radio to keep him company, he was driving west in a ten-year-old Winnebago named Mabel on a Pennsylvania back road with two kids who were as bad as all seven of his sisters combined had been.
Yesterday afternoon, he’d called Sandy’s attorney to tell him about Joanne Pressman, but instead of guaranteeing that the girls would be turned over to her as soon as she got back in the country, the attorney had equivocated.
“Child and Youth Services will have to make sure she can provide a satisfactory home for them.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Mat had countered. “She’s a college professor. And anything’s better than what they have now.”
“She still has to be investigated.”
“How long will that take?”
“It’s hard to say. It shouldn’t be more than six weeks. Two months at the outside.”
Mat had been furious. Even a month in the foster care system could chomp up a kid like Lucy and spit out her bones. He’d found himself promising to stay with the girls that night so Child Services wouldn’t have to get them until morning.
As he tried to fall asleep on Sandy’s lumpy couch after his aborted attempt to get the blood tests done, he’d reminded himself how much better the foster care system was now than it used to be. The background checks were more thorough, home visits more common. But the image of all the kids the Havlovs had abused kept coming back to him.
Toward morning, he’d realized his conscience wouldn’t let him out of this one. Too much early influence from nuns. He couldn’t let either the Teenage Terrorist or the Demon Baby spend months stuck in foster care when all he had to do was baby-sit them for a couple of days, then turn them over to their grandmother on the weekend.
Joanne Pressman’s Iowa address had been in Sandy’s date book. He needed to get the girls out of the house early, so he decided they’d catch a morning flight to Burlington. When he got there, he’d rent a car and drive to Willow Grove. And while he was waiting for Joanne Pressman to get home, he’d have the blood tests done, even if he had to carry Lucy into the lab.
Unfortunately, his plan had fallen apart when he’d discovered needles weren’t Lucy’s only phobia.
“I’m not getting on a plane, Jorik! I hate flying! And if you try to make me, I’ll start screaming to everybody in the airport that you’re kidnapping me.”
Another kid might have been bluffing, but he’d suspected Lucy would do exactly as she said, and since he was already skating on the thinnest edge of the law by dodging Child Services, not to mention taking the kids out of state, he’d decided not to risk it. Instead, he’d grabbed a pile of their clothes, some food he’d bought last night, and shoved them into the motor home. He had four or five days to kill anyway, so what did it matter if he spent it on the road?
He wasn’t certain how aggressively the authorities would be looking for him, especially since Sandy’s attorney would surely figure out where he was heading. Still, there was no point in taking chances, so he was staying off the interstate for a while where tollbooth operators and the state police might already have the Winnebago’s license plate number. Unfortunately, between the Demon Baby’s screams and Lucy’s complaints, he couldn’t enjoy the scenery.
“I think I’m going to hurl.”
She was sitting in the motor home’s small banquette. He jerked his head toward the rear and spoke over the sounds of the baby’s howls. “The toilet’s back there.”
“If you don’t start being nicer to me and Butt, you’re going to be sorry.”
“Will you stop calling her that?”
“It’s her name.”
Even Sandy wasn’t that crazy, but he still hadn’t been able to pry the baby’s real name out of Lucy.
The howls subsided. Maybe the baby was going to sleep. He glanced over toward the couch, where she was strapped in her car seat, but she looked wide awake and grumpy. All wet blue eyes and cherub’s mouth. The world’s crankiest angel.
“We’re hungry.”
