have his number. I can ring his work in the morning, though.” Her face cleared. “Yeh. That’ll do. Two nights. Cheap motel. Backpacker’s, maybe.”
I sighed. “Get in. I’ll drive. You direct. You can’t tell me that’s not your preferred mode.”
I achieved one thing, anyway. She lost some of the worry. Of course, she was narky instead, but personally, I preferred being angry to being scared, and I was guessing she did, too.
Something about her appealed to me. Either it was her guts, or I’d turned into a masochist. I preferred to think it was her guts.
She climbed into the cab, which was an effort, because she had to pull up her trousers at the waist and the legs were dragging a bit, and said, “I’m a nurse. I don’t direct. The doctor directs.”
“Why aren’t you a doctor, then?” I asked. “Never tell me it’s because you didn’t think you could do it. I’m not believing that.” She didn’t answer, and I shot a look at her. When she still didn’t answer, I said, “I’ll take the turning to Lake Hawea. I know vaguely where it is after that, but I’m not sure how you get in. Am I expecting to fight?”
“No,” she said. “I appreciate the lift, but you don’t have to do more. If there’s fighting to be done, I’ll do it.”
“Do me a favor,” I said. “No.” This time, she actually laughed. I smiled and drove on, leaving the town behind. It was warm in here, and weirdly cozy, too, the headlight beams picking their way through the darkness and nobody else around. The scent of honey and spice hung faintly in the air from her shower, and that was nice as well. Thinking of her in my shower, using my shampoo? Yeh, that was nice.
We’d had an adventure, and we’d lived to tell the tale. Now, we were off to have another one.
Off to the rescue, in fact.
6
The First Step
Daisy
With every kilometer Gray drove up into the foothills, I got sicker. I’d been fine before this—well, as fine as a person could reasonably be. Now, I was forcing myself to breathe in through my nose, one-two-three-four-five, then out through my mouth, one-two-three-four-five, feeling the saliva pooling just the same, and trying to overcome my weakness.
I wished we’d brought the dog. I could have sat in the back with her, buried my hands in her fur, and not looked up. Like when I’d used to brush and plait my sisters’ hair every morning, once my own was laboriously twisted and rolled into a knot and hidden under its white cap. The three of them who’d been old enough, anyway. Prudence had been two when I’d left, with not enough hair to plait. The youngest, Dove, hadn’t been born.
I’d had to leave Mount Zion to keep myself whole, or that was how it had felt. Like the tissue had turned gangrenous, and I’d had to cut it away. But it had cut me off from so much of the good, too, because afterwards, there’d been no sisters, no cousins to share my secrets and jokes. Nobody to comfort, and nobody to hold. Nobody but Dorian, who’d lived in a world of his own, and who now had somebody else in that world.
And, still, the thing that was making my pulse race faster now? The thing that was making the adrenaline flood, and making me sick? It wasn’t the fear of what would happen next. It was the memory of what had happened before.
PTSD, somebody had suggested, but I didn’t have a disorder. I just had too many memories.
Gray asked, “All right?”
“Yes,” I said, and swallowed. “Of course.”
“Brings back memories, does it,” he said. “Taking this road.”
How had he known that? I’d been so careful to sit still, to seem calm. I said, “Not really. Not exactly. Until the past couple years, I only drove it a dozen times that I remember, to the dentist and that. Or I rode, rather. Women don’t drive.”
“How old were you when you left?” he asked.
It helped to talk. A bit. It was using the time up, anyway. “Sixteen. We were both sixteen.”
“Both?”
“My brother and I. We left together.”
“Older or younger?”
Why was he asking? To make the time go by, I guessed. We were nearly there now, I could tell, even though it was dark. The land was leveling out as we came into the valley, though behind it, the mountains would rise like bulwarks. A good defensive position, you’d think, holding the high