Sorrow Road (Bell Elkins #5) - Julia Keller Page 0,17

would be a sign—a sign that she was on the right track.

After that, she told herself, her mind would lie quietly for a while. She’d be able to make it the rest of the way home. And once she was home, she could figure out how to fix the mess she’d made of everything.

She had spotted the store on the right-hand side of the road just after she crossed the West Virginia state line. JUNNIOR’S, the sign said. A misspelling, she surmised. Or the petty revenge of a sign painter who had yet to be paid for the last job he’d done for Junior. Or maybe it really was how the guy’s mother had spelled his name on the birth certificate. Could be. Anyway, Carla turned in. She parked between ruts of snow. She struggled through the shin-high mounds of it that Junior or Junnior—or whoever was in charge here—had not bothered to clear away from the entrance.

She headed for the rumbling cooler in the back. She searched in vain for a white-and-maroon can of Diet Dr Pepper. There had to be one, right? She picked through the assortment. Her distress was growing.

Dammit. They were out.

Maybe they had more somewhere else. In a back room, maybe. Maybe it was just a matter of replenishing the stock.

Carla returned to the front of the store. The old woman was having a frisky go at a thumbnail with a pair of rusty clippers, grunting with satisfaction at each tiny snip. She finished her grooming, such as it was, before looking up. Carla had to ask twice about the Diet Dr Pepper. The first time, the woman frowned and shook her head, as if whatever language Carla was speaking was not spoken here.

Then the clerk delivered the blow: No Diet Dr Pepper.

Carla felt a rising panic. She knew she was being ridiculous—for God’s sake, she told herself, it’s a freakin’ can of pop—but she had been so focused on getting it, so intent on procuring this one small token as a sort of reward for the progress she had made on the drive, that this bulletin that it would not be forthcoming had devastated her.

The panic gave way to outrage. How the hell could they be out of Diet Dr Pepper? A dump like this was supposed to keep staples in stock. It had an obligation. Why else would it even exist, except to assuage specific cravings for items with no nutritional value? Carla took a quick disdainful glimpse around the dilapidated store and its three rows of plywood shelves, shelves featuring little more than a couple of pyramids of dusty Spam cans and six jumbo rolls of Hefty paper towels and a shiny red clutch of Wavy Lay’s and several packages of Double Stuf Oreos.

“We got fresh coffee if that’ll help,” the old woman added.

At least she was trying. But that made Carla feel even worse: Was her fragile emotional state that obvious? The surly old woman would not be offering alternatives had Carla not seemed right on the edge—ready to faint or puke or pitch a fit. The clerk surely did not want any trouble in her store this morning. The snow was bad enough. Who needed to deal with a lunatic in a rage because they were all out of Diet Dr Pepper?

“You okay, honey?”

This time the old woman’s voice broke into Carla’s thoughts like as broomstick crashing through a plate-glass window. The clerk seemed honestly concerned about her.

Carla flinched. The unexpected kindness had caught her off-guard. And so, just like that, she started to sob.

* * *

The first hour of her trip from the D.C. area had been on the interstate. Plenty of traffic, even on a cold Sunday morning, with plenty of places to stop. Carla did not stop. She kept right on going.

The exit showed up a little before she was expecting it to. It dumped her out on another four-lane highway. Not an interstate, but close. Forty minutes later, she made another turn. Now all resemblance to an interstate disappeared. She felt as if she had driven off the edge of the world—and landed, weirdly, not somewhere in outer space, bobbing amidst stars and planets and dark matter, but in another universe altogether. A universe with its own special brand of dark matter.

This road was a shortcut to Raythune County, used by natives or by people whose GPS systems had spitefully betrayed them.

Gone were the outlet stores with their endless iterations of brand names—Chico and Nautica and