He sees me staring at her, rapt, and reads the message on my face for what it is, even if he doesn't see the reasons for it. "Isn't she a beauty?" She shivers when he puts her hand against her door, loving bride welcoming her husband home. She's missed him so. If only he could see how much she loves him.
"She is," I say solemnly, and he opens the door for me, and I step into the open arms of his lover.
She knows me, like the waitress knew me, like the routewitches and the crossroad charmers know me. She knows what's coming as soon as the door closes behind me, and the question hangs heavy in the cabin air: Is there another way?
I press the palm of my cold hand flat against the worn leather of her dashboard. It's warm, like a beating heart. The heat spreads through me, wiping out the frost. I'm riding. Even if the truck isn't rolling yet, I'm doing what a hitchhiker is supposed to do: I'm riding, and I'm wearing a stranger's coat, and my belly is full of diner food eaten alongside a good man's last supper. That's enough to bring around the thaw. No, I tell her, and she sighs, deep, shuddering sigh that even Larry feels as he's getting in on the driver's side.
"Now, don't you be that way," he says, and pats the steering wheel. "I just had your shocks looked at."
"You talk to your truck?" My palm stays warm after I pull it away from the dash. I try to sound curious and amused at the same time, like the idea strikes me as funny. All I really manage is wistful.
"Spend more time with her than I do with anybody else," he says, and slides his key into her ignition. The engine comes alive with a muted roar, lioness ready to defend her mate from the wilds surrounding them. Larry pats the wheel again, the gesture seeming to come automatically. "She's a good girl. She's always done her best by me."
"She always will." I lean back into my seat, pretending not to see the curious look Larry sends in my direction, keeping my eyes on the road. The headlights come on, and then we're away, and it's too late for anything beyond the open road.
***
"So, Rose," says Larry, as he guides his truck around a gentle curve, the night closing in around us on every side. "What were you doing back there? A girl like you, in a place like that, well...it's just not safe. Not everyone is out to help. You're old enough, you should know that."
"I do." The road is unspinning all around us, and the air tastes like lilies and ashes and miles that burn out like candles. Not long now. We're almost there. "I just...I'd been hitching a ride, and the guy I was driving with decided he wanted to go in a different direction. So I thought I'd stop in and see if I could find anybody who was going my way."
I don't need to see his frown. I can hear it. "You never asked which way I was going."
"You told me Detroit."
"Yes, but..."
"I left home when I was sixteen. I didn't have a choice." I let the sentence sit there to be examined, let him fill in all the spaces between the words, letting him realize that I still look sixteen, even if he doesn't understand that I always will. The story he tells himself will be terrible, because the stories we tell ourselves always are, but it won't come anywhere close to the truth. It never does. Until they finish falling into the ghostside America, they never start their stories with "how did you die?"
"Oh." His voice is soft. Silence closes in around us, for a while. Not long enough. "Don't you have any family you could go to?"
Family. There's an interesting thought. Show up on the doorstep of some woman twice my age with my older brother's eyes, and try to explain who I am, where I've been, why I went away...I shake my head. "Not really. We were never a very close family, and there's no one I could go to."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't worry about me." I offer a smile across the darkened cabin. Something flickers in his expression, something old and sad and scared. We're getting close to the border; close to the final fall. He's starting to feel the wind from the onrushing ending, and he still can't see it clear enough to do a damn thing about it. They never can. "I've been on the road a long time. I can take care of myself." The truck rattles on beneath us, eating the road, turning distance into dreams.
I have to try. I always have to try. It might hurt less if I stopped. That's why I do it.
"Have you ever heard the story of the woman at the diner?" Such an innocent question. Such a guilty answer.
Larry laughs. "Now we're telling ghost stories? I suppose that's one way to get me to stop asking personal questions. I've heard of her."
"How does the story go? The way you heard it, I mean. It's different everywhere you go."