reached the passenger-side door, her father managed to pop the passenger seat forward with twice the usual effort so she could squeeze into the back seat.
“Hey, baby girl.”
“Pronghorn get you, Daddy?”
“Sure did. No sense in trying to do right by a wild creature.”
“Guess a hug’ll hurt, then?”
“It will, baby girl. But maybe later after I’ve had a beer.”
“Deal.”
He made a kissing sound, gently pinched her cheek.
It was so dark out and the leather in the back seat so black, it felt like she was settling into a void until she heard the familiar creaking underneath her as she readjusted.
Now they’re charging through the dark toward Lubbock’s halo on the horizon. The Plymouth’s powerful V-8 engine feels familiar, comfortable. And finally, her mother’s stopped with all the damn questions.
But she’s driving like a bat out of hell, which isn’t like her. Does she think the Plains Rapist has wings?
“Oh, no.” It sounds like a groan her mother hastily attached two words to at the last possible second.
Maybe they have a flat, or the car’s banged up worse than her daddy thought and some warning light’s gone on in the dash.
“What, Danielle?” her father asks.
Her mother points to a dark smear on the windshield close to the passenger side. It’s backlit by the glow of the four headlights, and it’s dark. If it’s making her mother queasy, it can only be one thing. Her father already told them he struck the pronghorn so hard, it flipped up onto the windshield and then over the roof of the car. It must have left some blood smears along the way. And if there’s one thing her mother hates more than the dark, it’s blood.
“Can you reach it?” she asks.
“No, I can’t reach it. You crazy?”
“You can’t just wipe it off?”
“Woman, just drive the damn car and don’t look at it.”
“I can’t, Beatty. I can’t with it like that. You know how I am.”
Amazing, Marjorie thinks, that one fear can overpower another so quickly. Her mother’s so determined to get rid of that bloodstain, she’s pulling over in the middle of nowhere despite her fear of the endless night. Her father’s letting out a stream of curses, but in no time, she’s rounding the hood, standing next to the passenger side, leaning in to see how big the bloodstain is, when her father says, “Well, don’t ruin your dress over it, Danielle!”
“I’m not.”
Marjorie studies her father, the way he’s rocking back and forth, still gripping his stomach. He’s hurt bad. There’s no denying it. He’s not a man to avoid doctors when he’s got the flu or even a sore arm that won’t go away. And right now, he’s badly injured—bleeding, even—and all he wants to do is go straight home. There’s got to be some good explanation. He’ll share it in time.
With her, at least. And that’s just the way she likes it.
She’s been watching him so closely she’s got no idea what prompted his suddenly wild jostling in his seat. She’s worried he’s having some sort of seizure; then she realizes that in his weakened state his wrestling efforts to get the seat belt off are so ungainly they look like an epileptic fit. He’s also trying to kick the door open with one foot, but it’s too heavy and he’s in too much pain to accomplish both things at once. When Marjorie hears the familiar creak of the trunk opening, she realizes it’s her mother’s actions that have freaked him out. She’s rooting around inside the trunk, and that’s caused her father to convulse with sudden panic.
The seat belt off, the door half-open, her father’s managed to turn in his seat. He’s looking past Marjorie to where the rear window’s blocked by the open trunk. His eyes meet hers. There’s a blend of pain—physical and emotional—and resignation in them that she knows she will remember for the rest of her life. A sense that something he’s slowly built with his only daughter over time is about to be either irreparably damaged or forever lost.
Then the trunk pops shut, and her mother’s striding around to the front of the car and the expression on her father’s face seems like it was all for nothing, even though it’s left Marjorie with a single, clear thought that keeps repeating itself.
There’s something in that trunk Daddy doesn’t want anybody to see.
But if there is, then her mother’s missed it somehow. She’s found some kind of rag, and she’s using it to wipe the antelope’s blood off