In Time

SIX

DELLA is younger than I expected, somehow. I guess I heard the words no kids and assumed that meant she was elderly, not someone who looks like she’s in her late forties. Her white sedan is the only car that pulls into the parking lot the whole time we’re sitting there, so it’s impossible to miss her, even before she drives straight for us.

Bryson pops his head up just as she parks right beside the passenger door. We’re set as far back away from the storefronts as the parking lot will let us be, but I know we’re going to have to make this quick. At best, someone will see us and hopefully think we’re exchanging drugs or some other illegal substance, not kids.

She’s wearing blue jeans and a brown T-shirt and all it takes is seeing that head of fire-red hair for her guarded expression to fall. The lady still has her looks—a nice smile, a warm, open face. She doesn’t look wrung-out the way my mom did. She’s standing there, her aviator sunglasses on, her sunny blond hair curling around her shoulders, and she has her hands on her hips.

“I’m sorry, Miss Della” are the first words that come out of Bryson’s mouth when he opens the door. “I’m so, so sorry.”

She doesn’t look like the lecturing type, but I have a feeling if he were her flesh and blood, he’d be on the receiving end of some serious ass-whopping. Instead, she just cocks her head to the side, gives a faint smile, and opens her arms to him. Bryson goes willingly, burying his face in her shoulder. He basically collapses against her. I only relax when I realize the open door is blocking him from view.

“Y’all had some day, huh?” She lifts her sunglasses as she looks from Zu to me. “You’re younger than I expected!”

I laugh.

“I have a son about your age,” she continues, blue eyes inspecting me. “This feels like a stunt he’d pull, so you’ll have to excuse me—I’m trying to fight the urge to lecture you about taking big risks like this.”

Weird. Bryson said she didn’t have any kids.

I shrug. “No risk, no reward, right?”

Her smile falls just that tiny bit.

“Oh—no, I mean, no I don’t mean it like that,” I say quickly. “It’s just, the world, you know? Nothing changes if you don’t take a risk.”

“That also sounds like him,” she says dryly. “Do me a favor and save your mama the heartbreak of joining up with the Children’s League to see that particular thought through.”

Della is illegally harboring kids in her own home. Of course her kid joins an underground group that seems hell-bent on making Gray’s life miserable. It lights a fire at the back of my mind, burning through all the other vague possibilities I’d been slowly working through. I want to ask her more about it—more about her son—but she turns her attention to Zu, who, I swear, has not blinked once the entire time she’s been watching her.

“Hi, hon, how are you doing?”

She manages a shy smile that Della returns twice over.

“I have that gas money,” she starts, shifting her gaze back to me. “Where are y’all headed? Do you need a place to stay for the night?”

“We’re going to California,” I tell her, ignoring Zu’s surprised expression as she whips her head around. Of course we’re going now. “Her uncle has a ranch out there I’m bringing her to. Then I’m going to see if I can find some work.”

“You got your papers all in order? A plan to cross the border?”

And just like that, my heart’s in the pit of my stomach. “What do you mean?”

Della’s expression softens, but there’s something sharp working behind her eyes. “It’s the whole mess with the Federal Coalition and the League—they’re based out of Los Angeles, so Gray’s been tightening border security in the hope he can starve them out by not letting imports or exports through. You need special permission from the government to cross state lines.”

Well…shit. I press my lips together, trying to fight back the sting of disappointment. I’m sure there’s another way in that doesn’t involve driving. Or walking a couple of hundred miles through the desert in the summer.

“Do you need to get there soon? Would you have any way of getting the paperwork for it?”

“I mean…I guess we could…” My mind is fumbling for a way we could possibly sneak into California. On the back of a semi-truck? Could I bribe someone?

“Well.” Della drags the word out, running a hand back through her hair. “I guess you’re in luck, hon. A little bit in luck, at least. I have papers you can use, but they might be more of hindrance—and you’re going to have to figure out a way to hide her as you cross.”

“Wait—wait—what?”

Della smiles. “My husband, he’s a special kind of mechanic. He works for one of the companies that maintains the canals and aqueducts that bring water out of the state, so he has paperwork to cross state lines. I think they’re just in the dash.…”

Such is the force of Della that I don’t even remember getting out of the truck and walking around to meet her in front of the sedan. She points out the two special foil stickers affixed to the window. “I can’t give you these, unfortunately, but if you hit the border around midnight, they have fewer soldiers posted and they’re far more likely to be lazy and just wave you through. If not, show them these papers.…” She leans in through the open window, pops the glove box, and hands me a neat bundle of papers. “The company is on the auto-approvals list. If they ask for an ID to match against the name on the paperwork…well, you’ll have to get a little creative or say a little prayer and floor it.”

I swallow hard and nod.

Della puts a hand on my shoulder, smoothing out the front of my shirt like it’s the most natural thing in the world—but she catches herself and gives a rueful little laugh. “Force of habit, sorry. Two boys will do that to you.”

I didn’t mind it all that much. Honestly, it was kind of nice.

“Are you sure?” I ask quietly. “I mean…your husband, doesn’t he need the papers?”

She waves it off. “He’ll understand. Honestly. I want you to take this car and I want you to get that little girl someplace safe, okay? You understand that’s your job?”

I feel a little lightheaded at the weight that comes thundering down on my shoulders, but I nod. It is my job. I’m doing this.

“You’re up for it, aren’t you?” Della lifts her sunglasses again. “I know you are. I do. And you know how? Because you’ve made it this far. You called me, not the PSFs, not any of the skip tracers. There’s so much evil in this world, and you brought just that tiny bit of light back into it—not for the money or the credit or anything other than to help another human being out. And that’s rare, real rare. You’re a good man, and you should be proud of yourself.”

And it’s like when she says it, I do feel good. Genuinely good. I can’t remember the last time I felt so light. All the blood rushes to my face, but I’m not embarrassed. It’s just that my chest gets tight, and I have to hold my breath or else I’m going to burst out crying all over this stranger. I feel like if she touches me in that caring, simple way again, I’m going to explode into stardust.

And that’s when I realize it: not since Dad. No one’s told me something I’ve done is great or right or even worthy—and maybe it hasn’t been up until this moment. Before he took his life, he used to tell me that sometimes we don’t know what we’re looking for until we find it. I’ve been so angry, at him and at everyone else, that I don’t know how to handle the way I feel now. Because I think I might be happy. I think I might know what I’m supposed to be doing.

Bryson and Zu share a quick hug and he gives me this little fist bump before he climbs into the sedan, settling there like he belongs. I reach over to buckle my passenger in when she seems preoccupied with shaking the last bit of ink out of the dying pen I provided.

As Della gives me her directions for the fastest way to find the freeway and get to Southern California, I can see Zu frantically scribbling something down on that same sheet of notebook paper she and Bryson wrote their notes on the back of. I see the same handwritten message I caught a glimpse of before, only now I know Zu wasn’t the one to write it. The penmanship is too neat, too careful to be hers. When her arm moves, I can finally read the whole thing:

We love you. If you need help, look for my parents—they’re using the names Della and Jim Goodkind—and tell them I sent you.

I startle when Della reaches in to squeeze my shoulder and say good-bye. Zu looks up, panicked, and quickly folds the notebook paper up and leans over me to give it to her.

“Stay safe, honey,” Della says, blowing her a kiss, “the both of you, please.”

“I’ll do my best,” I tell her, shifting out of park. She steps back so I can roll the window up.

I don’t really know why I look in the rearview mirror as we drive away. I still feel a little bit like I’m walking through somebody else’s good dream, like none of this is real. And I know I won’t get the story out of Zu, not the full one, anyway. That’s okay. We’re allowed to have our secrets. Starting now, I’m leaving the past alone in the past.

Growing smaller and smaller in the reflection, Della unfolds the sheet of paper. But I see her when she presses her hand against her mouth, when she slumps against the side of the sedan—overcome, in relief, I don’t know. Zu’s message is only three words, but they nearly bring the lady with a spine like steel to her knees.

Liam is safe.

I think about stopping for the night—finding some cheap motel room along the way to California and trying to get a little bit of shut-eye to recharge, but I can’t bring myself to. After using Della’s money to fill the gas tank as much as I could, I’m left with the same fifteen dollars I had before. Any place charging that little for a room is the kind of place where we’ll wake up and find our car gone in the morning.

Zu keeps her eyes on the green freeway signs as we zoom past. By the way she keeps tapping her fingers against her leg, I think she’s counting them. We can’t keep a steady radio signal this far out in the desert, and I think the silence is starting to unravel some of her confidence. The lightness I felt earlier talking to Della is slowly bleeding away, too, into the dark, barren landscape around us. For the first time in my life, I miss the trees up north. I miss being surrounded by the known and familiar, and having it tucked in around me like a blanket.

I can’t keep ignoring the fact that after I drop off Zu, that’s it. That’s the end of my current plan unless she and the other kids desperately need me to stay and help them. And while it’s a great plan, I need a little more than that, especially since I don’t have the money for any of the state schools in California that might be open. I could see if there are any jobs there as a fieldworker, or in construction. Maybe their police force would take me. If not, I guess there’s always the Children’s League. I doubt they’d be picky, and at least I know I’d be doing something real to help the kids. Something to think about.

I like that. There are choices now. Possibilities.

“This place you’re going,” I say, “is it nice?”

She already wrote the address down for me. Smart thing had it memorized, and realized, even before I did, that we could roughly navigate our way there by zooming in on the skip tracer tablet’s map until it showed the surface streets around San Bernardino. I’d only been to California a few times, enough to start feeling a bit nervous once we hit Quartzsite, one of the last few Arizona towns along the I-10 before the border.

Zu shrugs.

“You’ve never been there before?” I press. “Even though it’s your uncle’s place?”

She weaves her fingers together, then rips them apart.

“Ohhh,” I say, “he doesn’t get along with the rest of your family?”

I get a thumbs-up for that. “Are you sure he’s…I mean, I know it’s your uncle, but he’ll be okay taking you in?”

Zu wraps her arms around herself, miming a big embrace.

“I hope so, kid, ’cause I don’t think you can stick with me if I go looking for, like, the Children’s League.”

It’s like I’ve slapped her in the face—the moment the shock passes, she looks visibly upset. At first I think it’s because what I’ve said was a little mean, but she’s freaking out, shaking her head, waving her hands. No—her mouth forms the words in the dark—not them.

“Why not?” I haven’t heard, you know, pretty things about their methods, but they do get their point and demands across in a way the parents sitting around on the steps of Flagstaff’s city hall never did.

She’s frantically looking around the different compartments of the car, pulling out sheets of paper, then putting them back when she sees there’s something important written on them.

“Dorothy, Dorothy—it’s okay, calm down.” I can tell she’s getting more and more frustrated—and just when I think she’s going to pull the Band-Aids off her face and write on the backs of those, she finally just settles on using the last of the ink to write the message on her palm.

NO!!! THEY ARE TERRIBLE! SCARY! YOU ARE BETTER THAN THAT!

I snort, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel. For a few minutes, I can’t say anything at all. There’s a stone in my throat and I can’t swallow it. A few minutes ago, all I could taste in my mouth was the McDonald’s hamburger I scarfed down for dinner. Now it’s so dry my tongue sticks to the roof of it.

“All right,” I tell her. “All right. I’ll figure something else out.”

Because even if it’s not true, I want it to be.

You can see the border station from a good three miles away. The floodlights are cranked up so high they look like they form a solid white wall. It’s only when you get closer that you start seeing the lengths of barbed wire and the enormous military tanks and trucks they have haloed out around the freeway, and the small, old building where the border agents used to sit and wave you through.

We pulled over a while back to get Zu situated, but I still feel sick about it—really, genuinely sick with fear. I’ve got her folded down in the gully of space where the dashboard curves out, but she’s only covered with a blanket and a large duffel bag of clothes we picked up at one of those Goodwill drop-off sites. I wonder if she can even breathe under there, and I wonder what’s going to happen if they demand to search the truck, and I wonder if she’s somehow going to have to save me from this, too.

“Don’t say anything or move no matter what, okay?” I tell her.

There are bright orange signs everywhere telling me to reduce my speed, but they seem a little redundant. The floodlights are so damn bright it’s hard to see anything and you have to take your foot off the gas to avoid crashing into the barrel barriers or any one of the uniformed National Guardsmen and -women.

Shit, shit, shit. I grip the steering wheel. I have the AC going at full blast, so high it’s practically deafening, but my back is sticking to the faux leather seat. You’re fine, Gabe—Jim! You are Jim! You are Jim Goodkind and you have every right to be driving through here—

A soldier steps out of the little station building, lifting her hand against the glare of my headlights. I’m waved forward, but not through, like I was stupidly hoping.

She raps her knuckles against my window and I roll it down, trying to remember how to breathe. In out in out in out in outinoutinout…

“Can I ask what business you have in California?”

Say something. Say anything. There is a little girl right next to you and she needs you to act like the twenty-five-year-old you are, not the three-year-old your wimpy-ass guts are telling you to be.

“The aqueduct…” I swallow, forcing what I hope is not a demented smile onto my face. “My boss thinks someone on the California side might have tampered with it. Water levels are suspiciously low. I have to check it tonight before they come in tomorrow morning.”

I have no idea what words are coming out of my mouth. I have no idea if there’s a canal that flows from California into Arizona. I always thought it was the opposite—that California was hogging the Colorado River and leaving us with nothing—but maybe I just spent too much time with drunk, bitter Grand Canyon tour guides growing up. I’m smiling so hard, though, I’ve lost all feeling in my face.

Shit. Why didn’t I practice this? Why can’t I ever think far enough ahead?

“I have all of my paperwork—passes,” I add weakly, fumbling with the glove compartment latch.

The soldier glances down at her clipboard, then back up at my face. “I don’t have any notes about this maintenance trip.…”

I lean closer to the window and let my voice drop to a whisper so she also has to lean in to hear me. “They think the Children’s League might be involved. No one’s supposed to know I’m coming.”

Great. Now in addition to looking sketchy, I also look like a conspiracy theory whack job. Great way to inspire confidence in my sanity.

Dammit, this isn’t going to work. Why did I think this would work?

The other soldier in the booth, who planted himself in front of the TV, sticks his head out to see what’s going on. The soldier I was talking to turns around, about to explain it to him, but he cuts her off. “Heron Hydraulics is on the auto-approvals list—I’ll give you a copy tonight to study for tomorrow.” He turns back to me. “Sorry, sir. Go ahead.”

I stare back at him dumbly. The other soldier has to give me a wave to get me moving.

But no more than a hundred feet later, there’s a whole other border station set up—one Della neglected to mention. It’s not nearly as impressive as the first one, but I can see a small dark figure moving inside the tiny booth as I approach. Hanging from the metal levers blocking the path is a sign telling me to HAVE FEDERAL COALITION–ISSUED PASSES READY.

Shit. Do I have those? I turn the overhead light on again, letting the car coast forward through that small sliver of free land between the two competing governments. I can’t find anything labeled with the Federal Coalition’s name in the variety of rainbow-colored official documents. By the time the car comes up to the metal bar standing between me and the velvet black of California’s stretch of desert, I’m fighting not to start hyperventilating.

What can I tell them—how can I spin my story so I seem sympathetic to them, not Gray? Does it matter? Are they looking for me to be sympathetic toward them? Does that make me seem more suspicious?

But by the time I get there, the police officer—highway patrolman, I realize, rare breed they are—just reaches over and presses something on his desk, and the metal bar rises. He doesn’t even turn around in his seat, from which he’s watching the same program the National Guardsmen were.

I let myself speed up, waiting for him to try to stop me. To show half as much initiative to do something as the first soldier did. But he just sits there, and it’s like all the lights are on, but no one’s home. No one cares. Given how long it’s been since the Federal Coalition was formed and how little they’ve done to help anyone, it seems appropriate.

Zu’s face is flushed, but she’s beaming when I lift the bag and blanket off her. When I don’t return her smile, her dark brows draw together in a silent question, but I don’t want to tell her. I don’t want her to know that all of a sudden I’m not sure this is a safe place, either.