by Brenda Novak
“You’ve had enough sweets,” she said softly, praying Max would accept her response and go back to playing with the magnetized checkers she’d bought him at Wal-Mart.
But he’d grown bored with that game, along with his action figures and his coloring books. “When will we be there?” he asked.
“Not until dark.”
“Will it be bedtime?”
“Yes.”
“What’s taking so long? I want to eat.”
A muscle flexed in Preston’s cheek. Loosening her seat belt, Emma turned to face her son and lowered her voice. “I gave you lunch already, honey, you know that.”
“Can I have my afternoon snack?”
Emma bit back an irritated exclamation. No matter how tense she was, she had to remain calm. “You’ve already eaten plenty of sweets.”
“But I’m hungry!”
“Then you can have some—” She was about to say protein, but she knew that would sound like an odd response to Preston. Parents of normal children didn’t typically talk to them in terms of carbohydrates and proteins. “Some string cheese or lunch meat.”
“I don’t want any cheese or lunch meat!”
Max was tired of the foods she typically used as substitutions. Just as he was tired of riding in the car. “If you’ll take a nap, it’ll make the time go faster, honey. Then, when we stop, I’ll let you choose something you’d like to eat, okay?”
“I want to go home,” he replied, and started crying.
Torn between his distress and her fear that Preston would drop them off at the first opportunity if she couldn’t get her son to quiet down, Emma gritted her teeth. “Max, please stop—”
Suddenly Preston reached down and tossed a whole box of cookies into the back seat. “Let him eat,” he growled.
With a final sniff, Max stopped crying and recovered the cookies. But Emma couldn’t let her son continue to binge. Without enough insulin, his body would be forced to use fat for energy, which would create ketones. Ketones could kill body cells. If they built up, they could lead to coma.
“I have to use the restroom,” she announced crisply.
Preston’s scowl darkened. “Now?”
“Now.”
He waved at the flat desert surrounding them. “There isn’t anywhere to stop.”
“When will we reach the next town?”
“Not for a couple hours.”
There wasn’t even a tree for cover. Just sagebrush. But Emma could hear the rattle of the inner bag as Max reached into the box for one cookie after another. “I’ll make do,” she said. “Please stop.”
PRESTON CHECKED under the hood, where he’d stashed his gun. Fortunately, the bungee cord he’d borrowed from Maude had done the trick. The weapon hadn’t moved.
Relieved, he leaned against the front bumper and lit a cigarette while waiting for Emma and her boy to take care of business on the opposite side. Barely two years ago, when he’d still been a husband and father and a successful stockbroker in San Francisco, he’d also been a triathlete. He’d conscientiously avoided anything that might impair his physical performance. He’d eaten healthy foods, lifted weights, cross-trained. He’d certainly never dreamed he’d ever find himself standing at the side of a desolate highway in Nevada, leaning against a rattletrap van—the only vehicle he owned—hiding a gun and sucking on a cancer stick.
Life was full of surprises.
With a careless shrug, he embraced the nicotine, halfway hoping it would kill him, then let the smoke escape through his lips in a long exhalation. “You done?” he called. Gordon’s lead on Vince Wendell’s whereabouts was the best one they’d found since the doctor had left Nevada. Preston was anxious to get back on the road. He shouldn’t have picked up any passengers, particularly a mother and child. But that burn on Emma’s hand still bothered him—what kind of cruel bastard purposely burned a woman? And he had to admit that giving them a lift wasn’t that big a deal. They’d reach Salt Lake in one day. He could handle one day.
“Um…not yet,” Emma answered.
Preston could hear Max talking about a rock he’d found. Emma tried to convince him to leave it behind. When Max refused, she told him to put it in his pocket. A few seconds later, she scolded him for getting into the dirt.
Preston hated to see her mollycoddle the boy. He wanted to tell her that a little dirt never hurt anyone. He would’ve told her that if Max was his son. But his son was dead. And Preston refused to get involved in Emma and Max’s lives. He was just biding his time until they reached Salt Lake.
“Domin—Max, cooperate,” he heard her say.
“You almost forgot,” he laughed.
“Calm down. You know we have to do this.” Her voice dropped to a whisper after that. Preston couldn’t decipher what she was saying until she finally called out that they were finished.
“Did you have Max go, too?” he asked. The last thing he wanted was to have to stop again.
“Yes.”
“Good. Hop in.” He put his cigarette out in the dirt and turned—then froze when he found Max standing at the back bumper, watching him.
“You smoke?” the boy said.
Where was Emma? She was supposed to be watching this kid, keeping Max as far away from him as possible.
His heart started to pound at the frank curiosity in the boy’s eyes. Glancing through the windows, Preston saw Emma cleaning her hands with something on the other side of the van.
“My mom hates it when people smoke,” Max volunteered. “She says it’s stinky. And sometimes it eats a hole in your throat.”
“She’s right.” Preston pulled open the driver’s-side door, then hesitated. The highway wasn’t busy, but he couldn’t get in and slam the door as he longed to, in case Max happened to step into the road while no one was watching.
“My dad smokes, too,” Max said.
Although he didn’t really want to talk to Max, this piqued Preston’s curiosity. Was Max’s father the same man who’d burned Emma? “Where is your dad?”
“Mexico.”
“How long has he been there?”
Max shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Max?” Emma called.
The boy darted back around the van. “What?”
“I told you to stay right here.”
“He smokes,” Max said loudly.
Emma lowered her voice. “That’s none of our business.”
“I told him you hate it.”
“Thanks a lot.”
Preston couldn’t prevent the rueful smile that curved his lips at the sarcasm in her voice. Children didn’t understand polite subtleties. They were honest, fresh, innocent….
Dallas had been the same way.
Memories of his son invited the pain he’d been working so hard to suppress. Preston had let him down. Terribly. He’d let Christy down, too. But especially Dallas.
Emma came around the van, holding Max’s hand. “Would you like me to drive for a while? Maybe you could nap.”
Reluctantly, Preston raised his head. She looked fragile and worried, like Christy had two years ago. He wondered what other horrors, besides the burn, had created the haunted expression in her eyes. At the same time, he didn’t want to know. He couldn’t get involved, couldn’t care. There wasn’t anything left inside him except a ravaging desire to hold his son again, which would never happen, and the determination to punish the man responsible.
“Just get in the van,” he said, and hoped she would simply do as she was told.
She didn’t. “Are you okay?”
He’d broken into a cold sweat when the emotions had overwhelmed him. He struggled to pull himself together, but he couldn’t erase the images emblazoned on his mind: Dallas soaking the sheets with a raging fever. Christy’s whispered prayers and constant pleading. Vince’s odd behavior. And, at the end, six-year-old Dallas lying innocently in his coffin, stiff and cold and gone forever.
Emma and Max made his loss jagged, new. Every emotional wound he had
that was connected to the past two years felt like it had just burst open.
He reached for the side of the van to steady himself.
“Is it the cigarettes?” he heard Max whisper to Emma.
“Why don’t you find another rock, okay, buddy?” she said. “But search on the other side of the van, away from the road.”
Now that Max had permission to dig in the dirt, he seemed unwilling to leave. “What’s wrong with him?”
“He’ll be all right. Go ahead.”
Max finally did as he was told. Except for the occasional car shooting past them on the highway, the silent stillness of the desert settled around them, almost as stifling as the heat.
“Are you ill?” Emma asked.
Preston breathed deeply, summoning the strength and willpower to avoid the jaws of the dark depression that sometimes gaped after him. He knew it came from the betrayal and the rage and the guilt. In a sense, he’d been as much of a victim as Dallas. But he wouldn’t remain a victim. “No.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He thought of the gun, and the promise that sustained him. It’d all be over soon….
“Give me the keys,” she said. “I’ll drive for a few hours.”
He looked up to find that she was still staring at him. “No.” He was feeling better, back in control.
“Why not take a break while I’m here to help?”
A semi honked as it passed, and the subsequent blast of hot wind blew her long, silky hair across her face. “Because I don’t need a break. I’m fine.”
He’d used his gruffest voice, but she didn’t seem to notice. She brushed her hair out of her eyes and tucked it behind her ears. “Come on, you can worry about being a tough guy tomorrow. You’ll have two more days of driving to manage on your own.”
A tough guy? He wished he was tough. He wished he were as tough as Christy and could have resumed his life the way she had. All through Dallas’s ordeal, Preston hadn’t been able to shed one tear. He still hadn’t released the pain buried inside him. Christy, on the other hand, had sobbed from the beginning. And now she was remarried. The invitation to her wedding had included a picture of her smiling brightly at the side of a man who used to be their neighbor.
You have to forget and move on, she’d told him only months after Dallas’s death. For our sake. For the sake of our future. Let Dallas go, Preston. Please. Let him go so I can, too….
But Preston couldn’t let go. Not then; not now. So Christy had moved on without him.
He had to admire her survival skills. She certainly wasn’t as fragile as he’d once thought.
“Hello?” Emma prompted when he didn’t answer right away.
“I can drive.” It wasn’t easy to accept kindness from someone he was so reluctant to help.
Her eyes appraised him coolly, almost mutinously. “You need a break.”
Preston almost got in. But…if she was going to be so stubborn about it, he didn’t see how it could hurt to let her drive.
Without another word, he tossed her the keys and stalked around to the other side. Since his divorce, he’d never been a passenger in his own vehicle. He doubted he’d managed to sleep, even if he wasn’t driving. Since Dallas’s death, it seemed he could never shut down completely. He feared too many things—that Vince would slip through his fingers. That he’d crumble and never be able to put the pieces together again.
But twenty miles down the road, Max nodded off. And the thrumming of the tires, combined with the movement of the car, slowly eased the tension knotting Preston’s muscles. Soon, his eyelids felt so heavy he could scarcely lift them.
“Quit fighting it,” Emma said softly. “Nothing bad will happen if you close your eyes for a few minutes.”
That’s what she thinks, he told himself. She didn’t know any better.
He tried to shake off the sleepiness so he could take over at the wheel. But a merciful darkness drew near, buffeting him like a gentle current. And then, finally, there was nothing.
MAX AND PRESTON SLEPT through the next hour. With a blues CD playing in the background—something Emma was surprised to find in Preston’s odd assortment of music—she relaxed for the first time since leaving San Diego. Manuel would never expect her to be traveling in a brown minivan with a man. It didn’t hurt that the color of Max’s hair and eyes was so similar to Preston’s. The three of them weren’t likely to raise any eyebrows—they looked like a little family.
How her son could resemble a stranger more than his own father, Emma didn’t understand. Because of Max’s unusual coloring, Manuel’s mother had often intimated that he couldn’t possibly belong to Manuel. But Emma knew she could prove it with a paternity test if she wanted to. She’d never slept with anyone else.
“What are you thinking about?”
Emma blinked and glanced over to find Preston studying her from beneath his thick, gold-tipped eyelashes. “Nothing, why?”
“You were frowning.”
Manuel’s family had a tendency to bring out the worst in her. But there was no reason to go into all of that. She and Preston were sharing a ride, nothing more. He’d drop her off in Salt Lake City late this evening, and she’d never see him again. Then she’d have to plot her next move—with no luggage, no car and little money—from the valley at the base of the Wasatch Mountains where she and Manuel had once attended the Winter Olympics.
“We’re only forty minutes or so outside Eureka,” she said, instead of responding to his comment about her expression.
“Have you ever been to Eureka?” he asked.
“I’ve been to Eureka, California, but not Eureka, Nevada. I’ve never traveled this road before.”
He gazed out at the scenery. “They call this the Loneliest Road in America.”
“Really?”
“Interstate 80 has more traffic.”
“So why’d you choose Highway 50?”
“I don’t like crowds.”
“I’ve noticed.” She purposely spoke in a biting tone. “I’ve never met anyone who hates children as much as you do. You remind me of Ebenezer Scrooge.”
She thought she saw him wince, but she could feel little real sympathy for someone who didn’t like Max.
“You’re getting your stories screwed up,” he said. “Scrooge hated Christmas.”
“I don’t have anything screwed up. He was a miserly old man who hated everyone, especially children.”
“I could’ve left you in Fallon,” he pointed out.
Emma had to concede that was true. Maybe he was helping them grudgingly, but at least he was helping them. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t say anything. He kept his face averted but she could see his reflection in the glass: the marked angle of his cheekbone, the squareness of his stubbly jaw, the slight cleft in his chin.
“Have you been on this road a lot?” she asked.
His focus didn’t change from the desert surrounding them. “I’ve been all over Nevada in the past seven months, although I’ve mostly stayed in Fallon.”
“But you didn’t get a job or buy a house there?”
Finally he looked over at her. “No, I usually stayed at Maude’s.”
From the appearance of his van, he’d been living in motels for quite some time. She wanted to ask what had happened to him, why he didn’t seem to have any roots. But she knew he wouldn’t take kindly to the question, so she resorted to something less personal. “The towns along this road look sad to me, like they’re dying.”
“The mines have closed down, but the people out here are tough,” he said. “They’ll make it.”
She considered him against the backdrop of the monotonous landscape. “I didn’t think so when I first saw you, but…you seem to fit in here.”
“I look like the miner type to you?”
“Not at all.”
“So what’s the connection?”
When she didn’t answer right away, he grimaced. “Never
mind.”
“What?”
“I’m Scrooge, remember? You think my soul’s as barren as the land around us—or something equally flattering.”
“No. Actually, I think you and the desert possess a sort of…stark beauty,” she said.
His eyebrows lifted. “Beauty?”
She chuckled. “Does that offend your masculinity?”
“It surprises me.”
“Why?”
“You have to ask? I haven’t shaved for a couple days. I can’t even remember the last time I had a haircut.”
“I’m not talking about your hair.” She made a point of eyeing his T-shirt and holey jeans. “Or your fashion sense.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“Your face. Your body.”
Even Emma heard the frank admiration in her voice. Their eyes met, and she wished she’d been a little less honest. A few seconds earlier she’d somehow hurt him, and had overcorrected. That was all. But the intensity of his gaze reminded her that she didn’t know him very well and, except for her sleeping son, they were alone in the middle of nowhere.
“I didn’t mean that the way it came out,” she said, making a point of counting the yellow dash marks flying toward them. “I—I wasn’t coming on to you or anything.”
He didn’t speak for several minutes. When he looked at her again, the flicker of interest in his eyes was gone. “Is the man who left that burn on your hand Max’s father?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You called him your boyfriend.”
“We were never married.”
“Why not?”
“His family objected.”
“And he gave in? In this day and age?”
“He has a close-knit family.”
“I still find that hard to believe. How long were you with him?”
“We were together for six years. We lived in the same house for five.”
“You moved in together after Max was born?”
“Yes.”
“And when did you leave him?”
