The Night Parade(3)

“I’m worried about Mom,” she said. “When can I see her?”

“Hon,” he said . . . and he wanted to hug her, but the last thing he wanted to do was make a scene, even if it was only in front of the masked teenagers smoking by the trash can. He could risk doing nothing that would cause someone to remember them at a later date. Of course, Ellie didn’t know the truth of it, so he couldn’t expect her to act accordingly.

That will have to change very soon, he thought. If we’re going to survive this, she’ll need to know the score. If not the whole truth, she’ll need to know something very close to it.

Now wasn’t the time, however.

In the end, Ellie turned away from him, his hand dropping from her shoulder. She wended around the group of teenagers with her head down and vanished into the women’s restroom.

I’ll tell her later, he promised himself, while simultaneously wondering if there would be a later.

When he found himself gnawing at his lower lip, he realized that he craved a cigarette. He’d smoked his last one . . . how many hours ago? It had still been daylight. There was a full carton of Marlboros on the top shelf of his bedroom closet, but they could have been on the moon for all their accessibility now. He glanced around, spotted a vending machine beyond the brick outhouse, but saw only columns of potato chips, chocolate bars, pretzels, and the like. Vaguely, he wondered if they still sold cigarettes in vending machines anymore.

In the quiet, his mind slipped back to earlier that evening and to the inexplicable thing that had happened in the car as they left their hometown in Maryland. He had been a rattled mess, his heart slamming in his chest, his mind spinning uncontrollably. . . until Ellie had reached over to him, her hand cool against his burning flesh . . .

He shook the notion from his mind. It was impossible.

After another minute passed and Ellie didn’t come out of the restroom, David began to panic. His arms still crossed, he began pacing back and forth in front of the door to the women’s room like a warden. The concrete walkway was covered in beetles; they crunched beneath his feet like potato chips. If she didn’t come out in the next thirty seconds—and he was now counting silently to himself—he would go in after her.

But what if she’s gone in there and started crying? he thought. What if some woman is already in there, and she stops her and asks her what’s wrong, and Ellie tells her that her father tucked her into the backseat of a strange car and spirited her away like a thief in the night? Isn’t that a possibility?

Christ, yes.

His hand was already clutching the door handle to the women’s room when the door shushed open and Ellie came out. She looked up at him with an expression of consternation on her face. David glanced into the restroom and saw that the remaining stalls were empty. The single bulb at the center of the ceiling flickered.

“Come on,” he said, rubbing the back of her head as he led her back to the car. He was reminded of the gas tank when he turned the ignition over, so he pulled around to the farthest set of pumps. A few tractor trailers stood like gathered cattle at the far end of the lot. David climbed out of the car, discovered that the gas tank was on the other side of the vehicle, swore under his breath, then got back in and repositioned the car. In the backseat, Ellie sat motionless and wide-eyed, staring at him and not touching any of the snacks he’d tossed back there for her. He could feel the heaviness of her eyes on him. “Go on,” he told her. “Eat something. It’s okay.” The smile he offered her felt as false as a stick-on moustache.

At the pump, he pulled his wallet from his pants and had already slid his credit card through the slot when he realized what he had done. It seemed every muscle in his body tensed at once. Even his teeth clenched. Nearly in disbelief, he stared at the tiny digital screen as it processed his credit card, then stared down at the card itself, as if skeptical of its very existence.

“Shit, shit,” he hissed through his teeth.

The screen prompted him to enter his zip code before processing the card. It also gave him the option to cancel the sale. Which he did immediately.

There was the cash in the trunk, but he also had a wad of tens and fives in his wallet. He held up one finger to Ellie, who watched him, emotionless, from the backseat, then he went to the attendant’s booth, where he forked over thirty bucks to the ancient dark-skinned woman seated behind a sheet of bulletproof glass.

Three minutes later, they were back on the highway. When he saw a white van in the far right lane, David felt a cool sweat prickle his scalp. It looked identical to the one that had been parked across the street from their house on Columbus Court for the past few weeks. David couldn’t decide if he should slow down or speed up. Finally, he decided to take an exit that dumped them onto a secondary roadway.

Despite her proclamation of hunger, Ellie never touched the granola bars, never cracked open the Coke. He could use the caffeine himself, but he didn’t ask her to pass the soda up to him. She had been quiet since leaving the gas station, and he presumed she had fallen back asleep. So when she spoke up and asked him to turn on the radio, he nearly launched out of his skin.

And the radio was nothing but static.





3


After some careful deliberation, he decided to stop at a roadside motel for the night. Prior to this, he had considered parking behind a billboard off the main highway or something like that, catching some z’s behind the wheel of the Olds like he’d done in his old road-tripping days during breaks from college, but he thought there would be time for that soon enough. Moreover, sleeping in the car would only prompt additional questions from Ellie, questions he wasn’t yet prepared to answer. He was amazed she’d been so compliant thus far, but he wasn’t willing to push his luck. Besides, he could use a hot shower. In fact, that sounded like heaven to him.