A Room on Lorelei Street (20 page)

One hand drapes Kyle's shoulder, and the other opens the door of the Thunderbird. Kyle's shoes scrape the gravel like a puppy, digging to find a safe place. He looks at the overloaded car, bags and pillowcases filling the back seat. “Where you going?”

“Brownsville.”

“Where's that?”

“About as far as you can get from Ruby and still be in Texas. It's where Aunt Nadine is.”

“You going to live with her?”

“For a while. Maybe. If there's room. But if there isn't, I'll find another place.”

“But why there?”

“I don't know. I'll ask Aunt Nadine. Maybe she knows.”

But some things have no words, Zoe thinks, no grand explanations that can be puzzled together. They come together in fits of time and circumstance, and the lines melt away until it is simply a new life. Not too far away. But far enough. She won't press Aunt Nadine.

“Grandma says you're running away. Stealing the car and running away.”

“Look like I'm running to you? And Aunt Nadine said I could come. Besides, if I was stealing the car don't you think Grandma would be the first one here stopping me? That's just her grumbling. And what did I tell you about that?”

He peels out a slow whistle and says, “Let it breeze right on by.”

She rubs his head with approval. “I love you, Kiteman. And if you can, someday…you come and see me, okay?”

“Won't you be coming back here?”

She looks down into his light blue eyes, the child eyes she never had. “I don't know. But I think probably not. I think…no. Only for funerals or weddings. You getting married soon?”

He laughs and kicks at the ground. She gives him that, the laughter on their parting, to ease his worry. She fills him with it so he can go back to his eleven-year-old life and she can leave with the worries all her own. She gives him that because she can and she always has.

“What's that?” he asks, pointing to the front seat.

“What's it look like? A big, mean, fat-ass bulldog. Buckled in tight because he's my copilot. No one'll mess with us.”

“But it's stone,” he says.

Zoe looks at the bulldog and nods. “No potty stops, either,” she says and erases the last crease of worry she sees in his face. She squeezes his head to her chest one more time before she gets in her car and pulls out of the drive. Gravel rasps under her tires, and Kyle waves madly, waving until he is only a speck on Aunt Patsy and Uncle Clint's green double-wide oasis.

At the stop sign before the highway she opens the glove box and pulls out a map. She spreads it out on the front seat. The paper crinkles—crinkles with a sound she is sure must be the sound of possibility—and her finger slides along a black curvy line to Brownsville.