beside her. (Unfortunately, our schedules are such that we can’t always have her drive before I go to work and I’m often too tired after work to get back in the car and stay alert enough to watch the road (although we have managed to complete her ten hours of night driving), so it’s the daytime hours on weekends when we can log her time in.)
Thus, we’re crippling our werewolf.
“Ice cream,” Maggie sing-songs to herself as we pass Culvers.
“Turn right at the stoplight,” Deek directs.
Charlotte shoots me a brief look and pointedly flicks on the blinker. “Got it.”
Smiling, I tell her, “Good job.” Although I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea of my fourteen-year-old driving, our State allows kids her age to get a permit, and Charlotte is very good behind the wheel. I really just need to check myself to prevent me from being a back-seat driver.
“Thanks, Mom,” she says dryly.
Deek shifts, his knees pressing so tight to my seat and therefore my spine that I could draw you a topographical map of his patellas. “You’ll follow Wolf’s Hollow Road til the end.” He’s panting slightly, and from the slice of him I can see out of the side mirror, he’s white-knuckling the bowl he’s clutching.
“Got it,” Charlotte chirps, and our bodies start to feel the change in our state of motion strongly as we take the tight curve to a tree-lined road.
Deek gags at the four-second relentless tug of gravity.
Meanwhile, I want to stop and take photos. “This is breathtaking.” The way the sun lights up the end of the road makes it feel like we’re driving through a tunnel of green. Even the tree bark is green, some kind of lichen that—fungus aside—makes the entire place a picture.
Deek coughs. After a moment of recovery, he agrees softly, “I’ve always thought so too.”
Charlotte is nodding. “It is really pretty.”
“Are there any horses?” Charlotte asks dubiously.
I feel my mouth quirk. This girl and horses. “Sorry, kiddo. Horses don’t grow on trees.”
“Ha,” honks Charlotte as the forest-lined road stands tall before us like a verdant wall.
Deek shifts again, his knees jammed hard against me with not a centimeter of space and therefore no relief. He makes an odd grunt.
I know it makes him uncomfortable, but I risk a peek back at him. “Still okay?” I whisper.
His eyes meet mine and then flicker away. “I’ll be fine, Susan. We’re almost there.”
“Maybe once Charlotte gets her license, she should teach you to drive,” Maggie offers. “Then you can sit in the front. Okay, now look at my horse. See her blanket?”
“That’s a very nice blanket. And the red bow is also nice.”
“I thought so,” Maggie agrees, a worldly tone present in her six-year-old voice that has me silently laughing.
“We could,” Charlotte begins, “instead of that plan, just get a bigger car.”
I pat her knee. “When you get a job, we’ll talk about an upgrade. Right now, we’re strapped tight, and this gets the job done.”
Charlotte nods, understanding our circumstances perfectly. “First: permit. Next: job.”
“Good plan,” I confirm.
“It will be just up ahead,” Deek announces. And then the trees stop and the world opens up into a meadow and our quiet two-lane road turns into a gravel path that weaves up to the most incredible stone structure I have ever seen.
A square bell tower sits impressively in front of a humbly-sized church, both structures made entirely of Gothic stone—with the exception of stained glass windows in the latter, all depicting wolves and lambs.
“Why aren’t there lions? There shouldn’t be wolfs,” Maggie observes, peering out her window as Charlotte follows the winding road.
“Wolves, not ‘wolfs,’” Charlotte corrects. “And you’re right, Maggs.”
“Actually,” Deek says cautiously, as if he’s afraid of being reprimanded. “A lion lying down beside a lamb isn’t in the Bible at all. It’s a wolf that dwells with the lamb, the leopard lies down with a kid, and a calf and a young lion are what’s mentioned.”
“Huh,” Charlotte says.
“I didn’t realize that,” I murmur.
Charlotte coasts to a stop in the gravel parking lot, which has a surprising number of cars packed into it. As in, Sam’s Club on Black Friday packed.
I guess werewolves go to church.
Deek’s seatbelt clicks. “Thank you for the ride. And you drove excellently, Charlotte.”
She beams and turns in her seat. “Thanks!”
“It was no problem to drive you,” I tell him as he unfolds himself and escapes the confines of his temporary sardine can. He places his borrowed salad bowl on his empty seat.