All That's Left to Tell(36)

“It wasn’t. It’s a long story, Genevieve.”

After waiting a few seconds, Genevieve said, “When someone has a scar like that, I don’t think there would be many short stories.”

As they’d crossed into Utah, Genevieve seemed to lose interest in telling the tale of Claire’s father. Maybe it was because once they’d left Nevada, they were closer to their first destination. Claire had taken plenty of road trips, and knew that when people talked while traveling, if they talked at all, once they were on the verge of arrival, they started thinking of their homes, or began to imagine the ocean, or the embrace of a brother or sister, so they would often fall silent. But the story of her father. She knew that had she seen him throughout the course of these years, had she come at Christmas and once over the summer, as other grown children did, Genevieve’s vision of who her father had become would have seemed bizarre and even laughable. But the void of years made most anything imaginable, and it struck her how through that time she had dreamed so little for him. The metronomic quality of his days that Genevieve had described, of his rising in the morning to a little boat on a lake, of his lying down at night with lights winking across the glassy surface, and the quiet anticipation of the slow shift of the seasons that’s magnified over a body of water—to imagine her father this way, less troubled by her disappearance, was, oddly, a deeper comfort than she would have guessed.

Claire settled back into the truck bed and looked into the sky. She didn’t want to take up Genevieve’s comment about her scar. She was missing Lucy. Tonight, outside the diner, she’d talked to her briefly on the phone. “We miss you, Mama, but we been so busy!” Maybe a line Jack or his mother had told her to say.

Now, Claire closed her eyes; they ached from the hours of driving in the sun, and she thought she might let Genevieve take a turn at the wheel tomorrow.

“It was a long time ago,” she said finally. “I was someone completely different.”

“People say that, but I don’t know how often they mean it,” Genevieve said. Anytime either of them moved on the mattress, the truck bed amplified the sound.

Claire shifted to her side and propped herself up on her elbow. Genevieve was lying with her eyes closed, her skin tinted blue, her high cheekbones catching a bit more of the light from the sky. Claire thought that Genevieve, like most people, looked ageless away from the light of day. She had picked her up fewer than twelve hours earlier, but a quality in her face tugged at something planted deeply into Claire’s memory.

“I always liked it when I knew someone was watching me when I was trying to fall asleep,” Genevieve said.

“Sorry,” Claire said. “I didn’t mean to stare.”

“No, I’m serious. I know it creeps out some people. That someone would be looking at their unconscious face. That maybe they’d be drooling or snoring. But I always liked it. It felt like someone was protecting me. Watching over me.”

“The boyfriend from Chicago—the one you’re moving in with. Is that what he did?”

Genevieve smiled. “You asked that question because that’s the kind of question I’ve been asking you.”

“Gives you a little jolt, doesn’t it?”

“I guess,” she said. She was still smiling. “But yeah, he did. I remember one time. We were renting this little two-room shack out in the country. It was December, and a front had gone through the night before, the first strong one of that winter, and we got like ten inches of wet snow. And even half-asleep, you know that’s happened, and you wrap yourself tighter in the blankets and try to sleep further into the morning. When I finally opened my eyes, he was sitting up in bed, looking down on me. And I don’t know what it was about the way the sun was shining through the clouds, but it was still snowing, and when the light came through the window I could see the shadows of the heavy flakes falling over his face and bare chest.”

Claire could see her eyelashes fluttering, and a crescent of white beneath them.

“He was just a boy then, really.”

Claire lay back down. Genevieve seemed to have a capacity to create a kind of longing in any story she told. After they were quiet for a while, Claire heard in the distance a scratching or sniffing in the dirt, an animal out in the desert.

“Do you hear that?” she asked.

“Yeah. It’s probably just a coyote, or something like that.”

But then she thought she heard footsteps, and the sniffing and scratching came closer, and by the time she raised her head, her heart pounding, she saw a dog pissing on the tire of the truck and a large man standing behind it.

“Can I help you?” she asked, which she immediately regretted, because her politeness had been a reflex from encountering strangers at the motel. Genevieve, who was nearest to him, had sat up in the truck bed.

“Well, you can start by paying for the campsite you’re sitting on.” His face was difficult to make out in the darkness, but Claire could tell he was looking them over.

“This is a campground you have to pay for? Sorry, when no one was here, we thought it was free.”

“Well, we have a tent over here. And my camper. It’s posted right outside the pull-through, along with envelopes to drop your money in. Plain as day.”

Claire was beginning to feel angry that the man had emerged after nightfall.