VenCo(75)

“Miss May Moon.”

“Sounds like an old song.”

“Yeah, one where your dog gets run over and your wife leaves in your truck.”

“Jeez, who’s picking on hicks now?”

They both laughed.

“Listen, Grandma, I think you should stay here.”

Lucky could rent the room for another day and slip the guy at the front desk some more money to keep an eye on her. This part of the trip was feeling dangerous.

Her dream hadn’t helped either. It had been so clear, so much fuller than other dreams. In it, she could use each one of her senses, and when she woke up, the transition back into consciousness had been confusing. In it, she was walking along an empty road, watching, waiting for her ride to pick her up. Then she heard a rattlesnake somewhere close, that unmistakable hollow, staccato rhythm. She checked by her feet, the ditch, even the hot asphalt—nothing. Then she saw a hat on the other side of the road. As she crossed over to it, the rattle got louder. Having no common sense in the dream, she kept a steady pace until she was close enough to see that this was the hat that belonged to Rattler Ricky. Even worse, she bent down and picked it up.

Underneath the hat was a rattlesnake, of course—it had been warning her for a while that it was there. Except this snake was dead, its eyes wide and covered with a grey film. Instead of relief, she felt overwhelming terror. She stumbled backward into the road. She turned her head just in time to see a large black car barreling down on her. She lifted her arms reflexively and covered her face. That had been when she’d woken up.

Stella sat up in bed. “I don’t want to stay in this stinky room all day.”

“I just . . . I’m not sure it’s safe for you to come.”

“I wanna see this Miss Moon. And besides”—she paused, examining her swollen knuckles all of a sudden—“what if I forget?”

“Forget what?”

“I don’t know—where I am . . . what we’re doing?” Her voice got smaller and smaller.

Lucky felt a sudden and profound heartbreak. She’d never considered for one moment that Stella was conscious of her lapses. It had always been about what those lapses caused for Lucky—the potential for loss, the potential for danger, the potential to screw up plans. And even when she had compassion, she certainly didn’t think that once a lapse had passed that Stella would feel it, like a tangle in thread.

She was about to speak, but Stella was throwing the blanket off and getting out of bed. “I’m gonna take a shower. And then we can hit the road.” She limped a bit, in that way older people do when their feet first hit the floor in the morning, straightening up as she walked. She stopped at the bathroom door.

“And find us a pancake place there, on your phone. I want pancakes. A whole stack. Can’t go to the moon on an empty belly.”

Lucky took a moment to enjoy this version of Stella. Somehow, the farther away they got from home, the more aware her grandmother seemed to become. As she climbed out of bed, she started to think that bringing her grandmother with her to Salem, permanently, might just be the best thing after all.



They’d had to backtrack a bit to find a diner, but it served pancakes, so Stella was content. She didn’t mention her forgetfulness again, and though Lucky danced around it a bit, Stella had either, ironically, forgotten about it or didn’t want to have the conversation. They paid their ridiculously small bill and left. Lucky sent a text to Freya before they hit the road:

On the way to the Yarb. Probably won’t have service down in the holler. LOL. I’ll message after.



Before she climbed into the driver’s seat, she looked up at the sky. She still had that feeling, the wicked one. But above them there was only blue and sun and the slightest whispers of white clouds.

Following Ricky’s directions, she drove until they couldn’t go any farther on a road that had become nothing more than a wide dirt path. She parked and reread the instructions: Walk in the same direction—up—and you’ll come across people. Ask for Ms. Montgomery. They’ll get you there. She got Stella out of the car and locked it.

“Onward!” Lucky said, pointing the way forward, trying to motivate Stella and hide her own apprehension.

“Christ, what are we doing here? We should just head back,” Stella said before they’d gotten ten feet from the vehicle.

“We probably should,” Lucky said. “But let’s do this anyway.”



This had to be it. They’d seen no other houses, and Stella had had it. If this wasn’t the Montgomery place, whoever lived here better be ready to give them a ride to it. Or take care of a very cranky elderly woman who had managed to snag about five pounds of burrs on each pant leg.

“Try to shake some of that off,” Lucky told her, pointing to Stella’s calves. “We look like total city losers.”

“Listen, if being more comfortable around sidewalks and indoor plumbing makes you a loser, I don’t want to be a winner.” She took a few feeble swipes at her legs that did nothing to dislodge the burrs.

“Quit stereotyping. You don’t know that they don’t have plumbing.”

“Oh no? Then what is that?” Stella pointed to a wooden outhouse with a quarter moon carved into the door.

“Christ . . . Well, do you have to pee, or what?”