Mae paused and looked up at Nick, who glanced up in the mirror and nodded for her to continue. His face was calm and somber, and Mae was reminded of her dad, who would listen to her with that same focus and intensity that made her feel like he cared about everything she said. She smiled, knowing that her smile was sad and distant. Despite whatever she told Nick, at the heart of it all, her dad had taken a piece of her when he left. She longed for the time in her memory when she would wrap her arms around his neck and feel his whiskers on her face, and smell his spiced cologne. She missed his laugh and smile, and forever the memories of him would trail her like whirlwinds of autumn wind. She wanted nothing more than to hang onto those glimpses of her childhood, but try as she might, they kept slipping through her fingers like wisps of smoke.
She bit her lower lip and pushed forward, not just for her sake, but for Nick as well. If he was going to die tonight, which she hoped with all of her heart wouldn't happen, she wanted him to die seeing the good and light part of her, so he would be convinced that what he had done was good. That was one thing her dad had actually said, a small piece of truth in her story that was otherwise a lie.
"Everyone wants to be a hero," he had said. "You want to die a hero, so you'll be remembered as a hero. And if you're remembered as a hero, that’s immortality."
Because that's what it really came down to, in the end, the feeling that you've done good in the world, that in some small way you died a hero—whether true or not.
“One day, and I remember the day very distinctly, because it was in the middle of winter, but the day was very warm. I remember playing outside without my coat on. I was swinging on a rope swing that my dad and I had tied to one of the high branches of an oak tree in our backyard.
“My dad came home early from work, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in days, or maybe that he’d been drinking. He didn’t drink much in those days, at least that I was aware of, but that’s what he looked like. His hair was messed up, and his suit was wrinkled. I remember his eyes—usually so blue and beautiful like the sky on the first real day of spring, but on that day, they were bloodshot and dark. I ran up to him, like a usually did, but he walked right on by without so much as a sideways glance.
“It hurt, but only for a minute. You know how kids are, hurt one minute, and then onto something else the very next.”
Nick nodded in the mirror, as if to say, “if you only knew…”
Mae saw a sign that said the airport was only a few miles away, and she felt like bursting with excitement at the news. She was so close that the excitement was nearly palpable, but even then, Mae held the excitement well. She smiled briefly up at Nick in the mirror and continued.
“I started swinging again, the branches on the oak tree creaking and groaning as I swung. And then the shouts came. It was the first time that I’d ever heard my dad shout at my mom. She was inside making dinner, or sitting beside the fire in our living room and reading a book—she loved to read, back then, and he started shouting. I stayed on the swing, not wanting to move, afraid to move. I didn’t know what to do, and for the first time in my life, I felt helpless. I was just a little girl, and there was nothing I could do to help my mom.
“He shouted for maybe ten minutes, although it felt like hours, and then it was quiet. I waited for another half hour. I remember being very cold, just sitting on the swing and drifting in the winter wind, until my mom called me in for dinner.
"Everything was normal inside the house, as if the whole shouting episode hadn’t happened. My dad even looked cleaned up—his hair was combed and he’d changed his clothes. His eyes still looked dark to me, like there was a secret there, but they were better. Much better than before.
"Both of my parents were smiling as if the whole wide world was just peachy keen, but under their smiles was something dark. Even as a little girl I could see it. For my dad, there was maybe a little bit of guilt, maybe panic. Knowing now what I do, I think it was mostly panic. But for my mom, it was terror. She was terrified of something.
“Over the next few weeks and months, my dad got worse. He stopped coming home every day and would show up at seemingly random times, sometimes in the middle of the night. It wasn’t until six months later or so, I don't really remember much except that it was in the middle of the summer now, and that my mom told me that my dad had a gambling problem. She told me that he’d lost his job and the house, and that there might be some bad people coming to collect the money he owed.
“It was a lot for a little girl to handle, to understand. We cried, my mom and I, almost every day. I think my mom wanted to leave my dad, but for some reason she seemed afraid to leave. We moved shortly after, to start a new and fresh life, but the problems followed us. The problems never left, really. There were people who followed us, and they were always in the shadows. You'd turn your head, and there'd be someone just disappearing from view, always just outside the corner of your eye. But you knew that they were there.
"Those people you saw, the ones who were shooting at me, they were … collectors, you could say, coming to collect on my dad’s debts.”
Her voice trailed off to a dramatic pause, and she almost believed the story herself. She kept her head pointed toward her lap, and didn’t need to look up at the rear view mirror to know that Nick was looking at her intently. He started to say something, but the words caught in his throat. He coughed into his fist and tried again.
“And your parents?” Nick asked.
“My mom finally managed to leave my dad, but she left me too,” Mae said and fought the pang of guilt that followed, seeing her mom's teary eyes in the cabin. “My dad died shortly after. They killed him, and they’ll kill me too, if they catch me.”
She almost winced at these last few details. If he tried, it wouldn’t be hard for him to pick through her story. Thankfully, when Eddie fired the gun at the bus, it had only added to the sense of emergency and panic that she was the victim, and she hoped and prayed that Nick would take the bait, hook, line and all.
She assumed right. When Mae looked up at the mirror again, she wasn’t looking at a man who doubted her, but one that pitied her. He felt sorry for her, ached for her even, and it was exactly what she needed.
"You poor girl," Nick said after several long seconds. The empathy in his voice was genuine. He hesitated for a moment longer, unsure of how to continue.
"Has your mother reached out to you since your dad died?" he finally asked.
Mae felt that guilt again, mixed with despair and hopelessness, rising in her gut and threatening to choke her poise. All the lies that had come before this one had been twisted with truth, but this lie was the worst of all. A wave of emotion hit her, and she fought back tears. If she cried now, she was apt to tell Nick everything, to spill the beans. And that would not just spell disaster for both her and Nick, but it would undo everything she and her mother had been working for. She felt like a little girl who was much too young to be feeling this weight on her shoulders, and she wanted nothing more than to curl up on a couch, her head on her mother's lap. Mae could almost feel her mother's fingers run through her hair, like they'd done a thousand times before, and this brought the sobs closer to the surface.
"No," she said. "My mom left me with my dad. I think that once she realized her marriage was over, I just reminded her of the failure, and she left. Maybe she went back home, but I doubt it. She wanted to be far away from anything that reminded her of my dad, and home would have been too much."
As she spoke, that familiar coldness came into her and replaced the longing she'd felt only moment before. The coldness that swept over her was invigorating, like stepping out of a warm house in the middle of a snowstorm. The coldness honed her senses, which was good, because she needed her senses to be sharp, especially now. The coldness was survival, and if her mom had died for anything, it was Mae's survival.
She looked out the window and saw that the bus was on the causeway that led to the DEPARTURES section of the airport. The
bus was surrounded by cars going in the same direction, and she noticed another city bus just a few hundred meters in front of them.
"Why don't I take you to a hotel, or someplace safe and away from crowds?" Nick asked, and Mae was grateful for the way he cared. He seemed to genuinely want to help her.
"No," Mae said, "I need to get out of town, and away from my dad's friends."
She broke off, hearing the double meaning of the last word she'd spoken, even as it spilled from her lips. She glanced up at Nick, trying to hide the panic, but he hadn't noticed.
"Why are they after you to begin with?" he asked. "If they … got your dad, why do they need you?"
She smiled furtively, as her story unraveled. "Because I know where he kept his money."
Mae hoped that he wouldn't see the sly smile, but he was watching the road ahead and nodding, as if this was just the most normal thing in the world. Of course, on nights where you pick up a girl who's freezing to death in the middle of the countryside, and then have some goon shoot up your bus, what's normal is open for discussion.
Nick pulled the bus into the DEPARTURES lane, and drove along slowly with the other cars. He slowed to a stop to allow a family with three kids to walk across the road to the entrance of the airport. Mae watched the little girl, bundled up like a little pink marshmallow. The girl pulled a miniature pink, roll-along suitcase behind her and although she looked tired, her eyes were bright with the excitement of getting on an airplane.
"Why not the police?"
She looked up at him, and the lie came easily. This time, the lie had a tinge of truth, enough to make her shiver, despite herself.
"My dad was killed in police custody," she said, and Nick stared, wide-eyed but believing.
"I hate just leaving you here," Nick said as he started the bus forward, and then looked questioningly at her in the mirror.
"You can drop me off anywhere, it's fine." she said. "I'll be okay. Much better, in fact, with all the people here."
"You be careful, and notify the police the second anything looks fishy. You got some bad people on behind you, whether you realize that or not."
“I know, and I will.” Mae looked over her shoulder, through the windows that lined the back of the bus. She didn't see the hatchback that'd been following them earlier, and there weren't any other cars that stood out to her. She stood up and gathered her bag in her arms. Nick stopped the bus several feet from the nearest entrance, and put the bus in park. He undid his seatbelt and lifted his considerable body out of the seat.
"I hate this, Ms. Mae," he said, and the kindness in his voice touched her deeply. He was speaking to her as a father would speak to his daughter. Mae stepped forward and wrapped her arms around his neck in what would have been, under different circumstances, an awkward hug. She'd just met this man, but he'd saved her life.
He returned the embrace, and then took her by the shoulders.
"You be safe," he said, his big hazel eyes wide and open with concern. Mae saw that the big man was doing his best to suppress an explosion of panic and anxiety. She nodded with a tiny smile.
"I will."
"And you call me just as soon as you're safe." Nick scribbled a telephone number on the back of a crumpled receipt and handed it to her.
"I don't care if you don't want to talk to me ever again, but you call me this one time, or I'll hate myself for lettin' you go like this."
"I'll call. I promise," she said.
"Now go, and you keep movin' before the devil catches up."
Chapter Nineteen
Nick Ambrose watched Mae get off the bus and walk quickly toward the entrance of the airport. He reflected for a moment that despite the dirt and grime, she was a beautiful young woman—too beautiful and young and innocent to be dealing with whatever was going on in her life. He knew that she wasn't being completely honest, that there was something left out of her story, but it didn't change the fact that she was being chased and shot at.
Nick was scared for her, and no matter how many times he told himself that she would be all right, that if anything happened now, there would be cops and security guards around, he still felt that something was deadly wrong. Mae shot him one last look right before she disappeared through the automatic doors, and she smiled warmly at him. He smiled back at her and watched her until she was gone, feeling a pang of regret that he hadn’t offered to do more.
He sat at the curb for a moment behind the wheel and wondered whether he should hop right out of the bus and tell an officer what had happened. Surely they would be able to do something to protect the girl. Whoever was after her was dangerous, but she was adamant about not involving the police.
Maybe it was the police that were after her?
But he doubted a cop would shoot at the bus. Unless, of course, the risk of losing the girl was greater than the risk of collateral damage.
It was dangerous to be caught up in business like this, and Nick felt foolish for getting even this involved in something that didn't concern him. Truth was, Mae reminded him of his own daughter, Janelle, who was in the middle of her final year of high school and seemed to love every minute of it. As it happens with most dads and their daughters, they’d grown apart over the years, he and Janelle, but no matter what, he would always see her as his little girl. He loved her, and when he made a promise to Janelle, he intended to keep it.
Just like with Janelle, Nick intended to keep his promise with Mae, no matter how strange their brief encounter had been. She had been alone and had needed help. If that had been Janelle, regardless of the reason she was in that situation, he hoped someone would have stopped for her.
As he pulled away from the curb and merged with the traffic leaving the airport, his mind wandered briefly to a place it often went—to the summer of Janelle’s fifth birthday, when he’d taken his wife and daughter to the northern shores of Lake Michigan for a weekend. He’d worked overtime for six months to save for the tiny cabin they’d rented—their first real vacation as a family, and also their last.
They’d lived like kings for those two days, enjoying the cool summer breeze, the manicured grass between their toes, and spending the long afternoons fishing off the end of their own private dock.
And the tire swing. It was best part of the entire vacation for Janelle. The tire swing was tied high in the branches of a cottonwood tree, and Nick spent hours pushing his girl on the swing, while tufts of cotton floated in the breeze like pieces of sunlight. He remembered her laugh as she swung up and down, twisting and turning as he pushed her.
At that moment in his life, he felt complete. His wife looked on from a rocking chair on the porch, engrossed in a biography about some World War II pilot, or something or other. Nick felt like a man that day, happy to have provided the short, but ever-so satisfying vacation for his family. He visited that weekend in his memories often, to remember his little girl and her big grin as she swung in the waning sunlight.
As always, he couldn’t think about that trip without thinking about the end of their family as they’d known it. Not long after that trip, his wife was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer. She’d died not long afterwards, opting to reduce the mountain of medical bills in favor of a quicker death—over Nick’s strong and desperate objections. He hated watching her go, but in those final moments, when he’d laid in bed with her, their arms clasped together like they’d lain for so many years, they sang together. They sang songs from Sunday School, praising Jesus or recanting tales from the Bible. It was mostly kid stuff, but as their soft voices melded together, he’d felt that same completeness again. He was with the woman of his dreams, and when the end had finally come, it was quiet and peaceful. He'd let her go into the night. It had been a fine way to say goodbye, but he’d cried all the same.
Shortly after, Nick and Janelle packed up their house and moved in with his older brother and his wife. It hadn’t taken long to become a part of their family, and despite the fact that they no longer had a place to call their o
wn, Nick always did his best to let Janelle know that he was always there for her. That she was never alone.
Like Mae.
He sighed heavily as he switched gears and sped up with traffic. He checked his mirror and pulled into the quicker moving traffic toward the interstate. He drove in silence for a few moments, wondering when he should call the dispatcher about the bullet holes in his windshield.
As he eased the bus onto the interstate, he decided that he’d tell them that someone had shot at the bus while he was driving through West Pullman. And why was he driving through West Pullman? Why, he’d taken a wrong turn and had to detour down some side streets to get back on his main route. Nothing to it, and the service guys at the garage would be none-the-wiser. Gunshots on a bus had to have happened before.
Nick reached down and flipped on the radio to a station that played the Blues and only the Blues. He sat back a little in his chair and enjoyed driving the bus without worrying about passengers getting on and off, or getting shot at. His thoughts returned to the lake with Janelle and his wife. In this memory, they were making chocolate chip cookies. Laughing in the kitchen, splashing water, and his wife wiping a finger full of batter across his cheek.
Flashing red and blue lights suddenly lit up behind him. Nick stared into the mirror, waiting for the police officer to pass. His eyes shifted to his dashboard. He'd been driving within the speed limit, nothing out of the ordinary.
Nick slowed the bus and pulled it onto the shoulder. He was surprised to see the cop car follow suit. He parked the bus and waited, running through everything he’d done in the moments before seeing the lights. He was sure that he’d done nothing wrong—
Ah, he thought, remembering his shouts into the radio right after he’d picked up Mae. Of course they’d send someone to check up on him—he’d yelled about gunshots and then flipped off his radio. Or the cop had simply seen the bullet holes in his window and had pulled him over to check it out.
The Snow Swept Trilogy Page 12
