truck smoking a cigarette. She didn’t make eye contact but felt him watching her.
Elsa straightened to her full height, unaware that she’d become hunched on her walk here.
She moved past the vagrant and entered the station. Inside, the lobby was austere; one row of chairs against a wall, each one empty. Light shone down from the ceiling onto a man in uniform, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, at a desk with a black phone.
She tried to look confident. Clutching her fraying handbag strap, she crossed the tile floor, made her way to the officer at the desk.
He was tall and thin, with slicked-back hair and a thin mustache. He wrinkled his nose at her disheveled appearance.
She cleared her throat. “Uh. Sir. I’m here to report a missing girl.” She tensed, waited for it: We don’t care about your kind.
“Uh-huh?”
“My daughter. She’s thirteen. Do you have children?”
He was silent so long she almost turned away.
“I do. A twelve-year-old, in fact. She’s the reason I’m losing my hair.”
Elsa would have smiled any other time. “We had a fight. I said … Anyway, she ran away.”
“Do you have any idea where she’d go? What direction?”
Elsa shook her head. “Her … father left us a while ago. She misses him, blames me, but we have no idea where he is.”
“Folks are doing that these days. Last week we had a fella kill his whole family before he killed himself. Hard times.”
Elsa waited for more.
The man stared at her.
“You won’t find her,” Elsa said dully. “How could you?”
“I’ll keep my eye out. Mostly, they come back.”
Elsa tried to compose herself, but his kindness unraveled her more than cruelty could. “She has black hair and blue eyes. Well, almost violet, really, but she says only I see that. Her name is Loreda Martinelli.”
“Beautiful name.” He wrote it down.
Elsa nodded, stood there a moment longer.
“My recommendation is to go home, ma’am. Wait. I bet she’ll come back. It’s obvious you love her. Sometimes our kids don’t see what’s right in front of them.”
Elsa backed away, unable to even thank him for his kindness.
Outside, she stared across the empty parking lot and thought: Where is she?
Elsa’s legs started to give out on her. She stumbled, nearly fell.
Someone steadied her. “You okay?”
She wrenched sideways, pulled away.
He backed off, lifted his hands in the air. “Hey, I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I—I’m fine,” she said.
“I’d say you’re further from fine than anyone I’ve ever met.”
It was the bindle stiff she’d seen by the truck on her way into the station. An ugly bruise discolored one of his cheekbones. Dried blood flecked his collar. His black hair was too long, raggedly cut, threaded with gray at the temples.
“I’m fine.”
“You look exhausted. Let me drive you home.”
“You must think I’m stupid.”
“I’m not dangerous.”
“Says the bloodied-up man at the police station at one in the morning.”
He smiled. “A good beating makes them feel better.”
“What did you do?”
“Do? You think you need to commit a crime to get beaten up by the coppers? I’m just unpopular these days. Radical ideas,” he said, still smiling. “Let me drive you home. You will be safe with me.” He put a hand to his chest. “Jailbird’s honor.”
“No, thanks.”
Elsa didn’t like the way he was staring at her. He reminded her of the hungry men who lurked in shadows to steal what they wanted. Deep-set black eyes peered out from his craggy face; he had a jutting nose and pushed-out chin. And he needed a shave. “What are you looking at?”
“You remind me of someone, that’s all. A warrior.”
“Yeah. I’m a warrior, all right.”
Elsa walked away. Out on the main road, she turned left, toward the camp. It was the only thing she could think of to do. Go home. Ant was there.
Wait and hope.
TWENTY-SIX
After a long, sleepless night in the barn, Loreda climbed down from the loft as dawn turned the sky lavender and then pink and then golden.
She walked down the road, carrying her suitcase.
At Sutter Road, she looked out at the spray of tents and broken-down automobiles and cobbled-together shacks clustered in the winter-dead field.
Please still be here.
Loreda stayed away from the muddy ruts and kept to the grassy high ground as she headed for their tent. She passed a hovel built of metal scraps; inside, a man and woman huddled around a nub of a candle. The woman held a very still baby in her arms.
Up ahead, Loreda saw their truck parked by the tent. Her knees almost buckled in relief. Thank God. They were