Miracle Creek(101)

Driving through town had been the worst part. She’d planned to take the back streets, but she saw a gaggle of autism moms, so she turned the other way, which led to the crowded Main Street. She pulled the hat down her forehead and drove at a Goldilocks speed—fast enough to blur by and escape notice, but not so fast as to draw it. She had to stop twice for pedestrians, and the second time, she saw a man carrying a big bag—a photographer?—squint in her direction, as if trying to make out her face, and she wanted to take off, but a mom was sauntering across the crosswalk holding a toddler and pushing a stroller, stopping every two feet to correct the stroller from veering. Just as the man started walking her way, the crosswalk cleared and she took off, praying he wouldn’t alert anyone.

And now here she was. Out of Pineburg, with no cars around. She had no idea where she was, but neither would anyone else. She looked at her watch. It was 12:46. Twenty minutes since she left. Long enough for someone to have noticed her absence.

She set Shannon’s navigation system for Creek Trail, the road between I-66 and Miracle Creek she’d driven back and forth all last summer. It was somewhat out of the way, but it was important to get on a road she knew. Plus, no one would search for her there; even if the police guessed she was headed to Miracle Creek, they’d figure she’d take the direct route.

Creek Trail was a winding country road—barely two lanes of potholed asphalt lined by trees so thick they formed a protective covering high above, the trees reaching sixty, seventy feet. A tree-tunnel roller coaster, Henry had called it. It was strange, being on this road. The last time she’d driven here was, of course, on the day of the explosion, a day just like today—a sunny day following torrential rain, with swaths of sunlight slashing through the slits in the canopy of leaves overhead and pools of mud splashing up into tear-shaped stains on the car windows. Which meant that the last time she’d made that turn, Henry had been alive. This thought—Henry sitting and talking behind her, their breaths commingling, her lungs taking in the air expelled from Henry’s—made her grip the steering wheel harder, sending her knuckles spiking up.

A bright yellow sign with a U-shaped arrow came into view, warning cars of the hairpin turn—Henry’s favorite—ahead. On the morning of the explosion, suffering from a throbbing headache (she couldn’t sleep after the CPS visit the previous night), she’d said right at this spot how much she hated this road, how these curves made her nauseated. He’d laughed and said, “But it’s fun—it’s a tree-tunnel roller coaster!” The high pitch of his laughter had pierced her temples, and she’d wanted to smack him. She’d said in a frosty tone how insensitive he was being, and he should practice saying out loud, “I’m sorry you’re feeling sick—can I do anything to help?” He’d said, “I’m sorry, Mommy. Can I help?” and she’d said, “No. It’s ‘I’m sorry you’re feeling sick—can I do anything to help?’ Try again.” She’d made him repeat her exact wording twenty times in a row, starting over whenever he got even one word wrong, his voice quivering more and more each time she made him try again.

The thing was, there was nothing magical about her wording, no functional difference between his words and hers. She’d only wanted to torture him, bit by bit, as payback for her frustration. But why? That day, she’d been convinced he was still (after four years of social-skills therapy!) not reading social cues. But here, away from the moment, away from him, it occurred to her how she could as easily have interpreted his laughter as him trying to lift her spirits or just being playful, like any normal eight-year-old boy dealing with his crabby mom. In fact, his labeling the road a “tree-tunnel roller coaster” had been downright creative—why hadn’t she seen that? Was it possible that everything she’d regarded as a remnant of autism was nothing more than the immaturity inherent in kids, the kind that mothers could find either annoying or adorable depending on their mood, except that Elizabeth—because of Henry’s history, because she was so damned tired all the time—found everything he did irritating?

A squirrel ran out, and she veered, easily avoiding it. She was used to critters here—she’d seen at least one a day last summer. In fact, a deer around this spot was what had prompted her decision to quit HBOT only hours before the explosion. She’d been driving home after the morning dive, distracted with thoughts about the protesters’ threats and her fight with Kitt, and she saw the deer too late and braked off the road into a rock, messing up the car’s alignment. Her car felt wobbly, and after she dropped off Henry at camp, she tried to figure out when she had time to take the car in, especially since she’d spent two hours researching HBOT fires from the protesters’ flyer before concluding that Pak’s rules (all-cotton clothing, no paper, no metals) were sufficient to prevent similar accidents. She had looked up at her schedule on the wall for that day:

7:30

Leave for HBOT (H breakfast in car)



9–10:15

HBOT



11–3

Camp (get groceries, make dinner for H)



3:15–4:15

Speech



4:30–5

Eye-tracking exercises



5–5:30

Emotion ID homework



5:30

Leave for HBOT (H dinner in car)