to do was throw on a camo T-shirt and find a ball cap. If we can find you some chewing tobacco, you're gold."
"I'm not in disguise," Claire said. Eve snorted. "Honey, you live in disguise. Which is lucky for us. Come on, maybe Linda's still got some cookies left."
"For breakfast?"
"I never said I was the Nutrition Nazi." Linda was up--yawning and tired, but awake--when they opened up the office door. She was sipping black coffee, and when Eve said good morning, Linda waved at the plate of cookies on the counter. Eve looked relieved. "Ah--could I have some coffee, too?"
"Right there on the pot. Pour yourself a big one. It's already a long day." Linda had put on another shirt--still checked, but different colors--but otherwise, she looked pretty much the same. "So, you kids get any sleep at all?"
"Not much," Shane mumbled around a mouthful of cookie as Eve poured a chunky white mugful of coffee. He held out his hand in a silent demand for her to get him some, too. She rolled her eyes, put the pot back on the burner, and walked past him to the cookie tray. "Hence, Miss Attitude."
"The attitude comes from someone not even wanting to fetch his own coffee." Shane shrugged and got his own, as Eve raided the cookie tray and Claire nibbled on part of one, too. She supposed she ought to feel more tired. She probably would, later, but right now, she felt--excited? Maybe nervous was a better term for it. "So," she ventured, "where do you go to buy a car here?"
"In Durram?" Linda shook her head. "Couple of used places, that's all. Any new cars, we go to the city for them. Not that there's many new cars round here these days. Durram used to be an oil town, back in the boom days, pumped a lot of crude out of the ground, but when it folded, it hit the ground hard. People been leaving ever since. It never was huge, but what you see now ain't more than half what it was fifty years ago, and even then a lot of those buildings are closed up."
"Why do you stay?" Shane asked, and sipped his coffee. Linda shrugged. "Where else I got to go? My husband's buried here; came back dead from the war in Iraq, that first one. My family's here, such as they are, including Ernie, my grandson. Ernie runs one of the car lots, which is why I figure we can find you what you want at a good deal this early in the morning." She grinned. "If an old woman can't make her own grandson get out of bed before dawn to do her a favor, there's no point in living. Just let me finish my coffee and we'll be on our way." She drank it fast, faster than Shane and Eve could gulp their own, and in about five minutes the four of them were piling into the bench seat of Linda's pickup truck, with more rust than paint on the outside, and sagging seats on the inside. Claire sat on Shane's lap, which wasn't at all a bad thing from her perspective. From the way he held her in place, she didn't think he objected, either. Linda started up the truck with a wheezing rattle of metal, and the engine roared as she tore out of the gravel parking lot and onto the narrow two-lane road heading toward Durram. "Huh," she said as they passed the town limits sign, barely readable from shotgun blasts. "Usually there's a deputy out here in the mornings. Guess somebody overslept. Probably Tom. Tom likes those late nights at the bar, sometimes; he's gonna catch hell for blowing it again."
"You mean fired?"
"Fired? Not in Durram. You don't get fired in Durram ; you get embarrassed." Linda drove a couple of blocks, past some empty shops and one empty gas station, then took a right turn and then a left. "Here it is." The sign said HURLEY MOTORS, and it was about a million years old. Somebody had hit it with buckshot, too, once upon a time, but from the rust, it had been a while ago--maybe before Claire was born; maybe before her mother was born. There was a small, sad collection of old cars parked in front of a small cinder-block building, which looked like it might have been built by the same guy who'd built Linda's motel. Come to think of it, it probably had.