Mother May I(78)

“Thank you,” she said again, blinking very fast. The money disappeared into her pocket quickly, as if she was afraid I’d change my mind.

“Take care of yourself,” I told her.

We got back into the car. Trey seemed about to say something, but he got one look at my face and put us in drive and headed out. I grabbed his hand again.

With every passing mile, I could feel us getting closer to Coral Lee Pine. I could feel her waiting. Our strange connection crackled, as slim as a filament but strong and live with current. I wondered if she sensed me coming as well, catching the ozone smell of our shared electricity rising in the wind.

The roads were old, and the closer we got, the worse they became. My SUV shuddered and jolted over the pitted, ash-gray asphalt. My cell phone lost its signal.

Ten minutes out Marshall opened his seat belt and lay down across the floorboards. Trey was driving, so I unclipped mine as well and leaned between the seats to help cover him with the blankets. The Escalade had a flat floor with a good amount of legroom, but long, tall Marshall still had to lie half on his back, half on his side, his knees at an awkward angle.

As I layered the blankets over his body, making sure his feet were covered, I felt as if I were tucking him in. His eyes met mine, determined, encouraging. I touched his cheek and nodded, though he hadn’t said a thing. I pulled the covers over his face.

If all went well, Coral would be up the hill, on the grounds of Funtime itself. From her perch she’d be able to see us arrive. She would not come down, Marshall had assured me over and over. It would be bad tactics to give up the high ground before making sure Trey and I really had come alone, with no police. But did old ladies think like cops, in terms of tactics?

The sparse woods grew thicker as the hills grew steeper. There was still a faded sign standing at the turnoff. It featured a tall, cowboy-shaped human figure wielding a lasso. His face and body were covered in graffiti almost as old and faded as the sign itself. I could see that the coils of his rope spelled out funtime, but only because I already knew the place’s name.

A mile past the sign, another directed us left into the parking lot. It was empty except for an ancient Honda, the white paint coated in filth and the back bumper crumpled in and rusted. Trey crept toward it, avoiding the largest potholes. He looked pale as he parked beside it, just left of the wide concrete double staircase.

“You ready?” I asked the heap of blankets. I heard a muffled yes. I got my phone out and put it on vibrate, then opened up my stopwatch app and set it for seven minutes. The blankets tented and shifted as Marshall did the same. When the timer went off, I would have thirty seconds to make sure Coral was not watching the lot so Marshall could slip out of the car unseen and get into the cover of the woods. If Coral Lee spotted him, she’d hurry back to the hidey-hole and get to Robert first. If she was armed, I might not be able to stop her.

Trey said, “I still don’t like you going up there alone.”

“She probably expects me to come up first.” I sounded sure, because I was. I could feel her above us, watching. Wanting to talk to me again. The strange thing was, I wanted it, too. I was almost hungry for it, this chance to clearly see the face that went with the voice I knew so well. I wanted her to look right at me, too, and really see me. I wanted the chance to change her mind. “Just stay here.”

“Bree,” my husband said, but this was the plan.

“One, two, three,” I said to the heap of blankets, then hit the timer on my phone.

“Got it,” Marshall said.

The numbers began counting down. I slid the phone into my back pocket to muffle the vibration.

“Bree,” Trey said again.

Our eyes met. The world could change in so many different awful ways in the next hour.

I was conscious of Marshall, lying prone on the floor, and the tick of each second. I leaned over to press my mouth against my husband’s, hard and fast.

“Trust me,” I said. I could feel how tough it was for him to let me get out of the car, close the door, and leave him there, but he did it.

I hurried toward the entrance. I had just shy of seven minutes. The concrete stairs were wide and steep, with four metal railings breaking them into three sections. I went straight up the middle, fast and steady. As I ascended, I thought, Get into character. But who was this person climbing up to see Coral Lee Pine?

Betsy’s black Visa could not help me here. I could almost feel it fall away. So many things were falling away. For this meeting, our first, our last, I had to be a mother, like her. A woman from small-town Georgia. Like Lexie, the only daughter of a hardscrabble single mom. This was the person who might move her to relent.

Going up, it did not feel like I was putting on a role. It felt like being peeled. I shrugged off anything that wouldn’t help me. The corporate wife with her closetful of thousand-dollar dresses. The stay-at-home mom with a cleaning lady and the luxury of no job beyond her family, able to help at every rehearsal and robotics meet. The wealthy woman on the board of two prominent nonprofits. Even the young, pretty Bree who’d gone strolling through the High Museum, so confident, catching Trey’s eye in her expensive, borrowed sundress.

It all fell away, until I felt like little more than a child. I was a girl who’d never had dialect classes to sand her accent away; I could feel my mouth resetting itself for extended vowels and dropped g’s. I was Betsy’s friend, tearing down the pitted, pale gray asphalt of our street on a hand-me-down Big Wheel. I was Shelly Ann Kroger’s daughter, making tuna casserole with crumbled potato chips on top after school, because my mom worked two jobs and she would come home so tired and hungry.