CHAPTER 35
‘They were probably for us,’ Simone says dully.
‘Yes,’ Lucy agrees tightly.
‘We’ve got to leave the car,’ Simone says, sitting there in deafening silence. She knew it was a risk to take it, but what other choice did they have? They couldn’t simply walk out into hundreds of miles of desert.
Only, of course, now, they’ll have to.
The Terlingua dream dies a death, there in an abandoned garage, like everything. The net is closing in. Simone doesn’t know how long they can keep running for.
All they can hope for is some time: time for the car to be discovered, time for them to get somewhere, to do something, to gather evidence, to make a plan, whatever that might be. To talk to the police in another municipality. To find a lawyer. To find help.
‘We should have left the car and got a cab,’ Lucy says flatly, and her voice contains some blame within it.
Simone knows where this is heading, but she doesn’t try to divert it this time.
Lucy’s anger, today, is fair enough, even though Simone has spent the last four years trying to teach Lucy to control her hot-headed tendencies or at the very least use them for good.
But only recently, after Lucy told a cat-calling bricklayer to suck his own dick, Simone had found herself thinking, OK, is a female temper so bad, these days?
‘Our faces are on the news,’ she tells her daughter.
‘Only just now, and only local. No jaded Uber driver would’ve noticed or cared,’ Lucy says, her tone acerbic, and Simone wonders if she truly believes this, or whether she’s just arguing the toss because they’re stressed and tired and running.
Beyond the garage is highway, stars and desert. They are in the real, true wilderness. With no car – this is … this is mad. They might as well just sit here and wait for their arrest, or their capture by a criminal kidnapper.
‘This is,’ Lucy says, her voice rising as she speaks exactly what Simone’s been thinking, ‘this is mad!’ And here it comes: the explosion. Today’s arrives in the form of a single punch to the dashboard. ‘Fucking fucked up.’
‘I know,’ Simone says.
‘What the fuck are we going to do?’ Lucy says. Simone doesn’t bother to admonish the swearing. ‘We’re – just … they’re after us.’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know,’ Simone says.
‘This is an actual nightmare.’
‘I know. Let me think.’ Simone puts her head into her hands.
But she’s out of ideas. She ought to gun the engine, just drive, drive to the police station and go down for life, worse, but she doesn’t.
When she opens her eyes, and looks at her daughter, there’s an enigmatic expression on her face.
‘What?’ Simone asks her.
‘Terlingua is a few days away on foot. It’s a straight line, south. I’ve seen it on maps when people from camp went hiking.’
‘Right …?’
‘And we have the tent. We were going to camp anyway,’ Lucy says feebly, her voice imbued with the sad and specific tone people get when they try to make the best of a bad situation.
‘I mean, I don’t know, Luce. We weren’t going to camp by the side of a road.’
‘Desert’s desert.’
They were going to go shopping for everything. They were going to go to a proper campsite, hike every day. Make s’mores, Lucy said, and Simone had said, ‘What exactly are they?’ and Lucy had said, ‘A cultural rite of passage. Don’t worry about the ingredients, nor the Michelin Guide presentation.’
She locks eyes with Lucy now. ‘OK. We need to leave the car. So. OK. We have no choice.’
They get out. Their footsteps echo in the garage. The floor is pristine but hastily painted, the edges grey and bubbling. Simone wonders whose this is, who pays the rent on it, why they leave it open, but there isn’t any time to think. They have to get as far as possible on foot.
‘They might know we’re heading to Terlingua now,’ Simone says. ‘If that police car was for us.’
‘We can’t get anywhere else,’ Lucy says. ‘Everywhere is so far apart. We have, like, what, a few days’ worth of food?’
Simone nods.
Together, they walk around to the boot and begin gathering everything.
They have about half of what they planned to get.
All the gear: the tent, rolled-up foam mattresses they strap on to their backs.
A little lantern. Matches. They have non-perishable food Simone instructed Lucy to buy: cans of tomatoes, tinned sausages, bread, and what she bought in Mexico, but none of the luxuries they intended to add.
‘What’s this?’ Lucy asks, indicating the bag from the Mexican superstore, which Simone can’t stand to look at.
She waves a hand. ‘Mexican food,’ she says, ‘we can pack it.’ She scans over what they have.
It’s a week’s worth of food, and a few days of bottled water, if they’re careful.
It’s crappy sustenance – and no salt, something Simone is deeply ashamed to admit bothers her, but it does – but it will be OK for a short while in the desert while they … while they what?
The bags weigh heavy on their shoulders, digging in painfully. But Simone is glad of their heft; it means they have food and water.
They close the boot, leaving the keys on the top of the car.
Simone is struck by the strange notion that she will probably never see this hire car again. It doesn’t matter. It isn’t hers. But there is a finality to it, like when you leave a hotel you loved but know you will never return to.
Because something is insistent in her brain. What is the plan? it asks. Her entire life, she’s had a plan, even if it wasn’t working.
But now Simone has nothing. In the strangely sterile garage, she looks at her daughter readjusting her rucksack, taking out five bottles of Evian and putting them back in differently in an attempt to make it more comfortable.
She closes the shutter door to hide the car – thank God, thank God, it closes fully – and then they’re on foot.
They cross the highway, and Lucy indicates the vast expanse of desert in front of them.
It occurs to Simone that, soon, they won’t know the time.
Her Apple Watch is dead. They have the new flip phone, but it won’t last long with no charger, though it’s currently off and inactive.
‘There are campsites and things,’ Lucy says, ‘dotted around in the desert. Some might be empty? If we go this way, I think it’ll take us into Big Bend National Park, then through that to Terlingua on the other side of it,’ she says, and something about her tone makes Simone look at her as they cross the deserted highway, desert bugs biting at their legs, air finally cold, swirling around them, making them shiver.
Simone looks up at the sky. It has become a lot colder while they have been driving and panicking and rushing.
It concerns her, this environment. Going on the run in the desert is not the same as going camping; you can leave one of those situations, and not the other.
They’re conspicuous, the two of them, their faces on the news.
‘I’m sorry about losing my temper. I’m such a loser,’ Lucy says. ‘This is just –’
‘You’re not a loser.’
‘Did you ever use to hit stuff?’ Lucy says, though she knows the answer.
‘Sometimes. Printers. The odd car dashboard, too.’ Simone no longer feels shame about this. These facets of being human that most people experience. The only thing is, most people don’t tell each other about them. That’s all. But they’re still happening.
‘But you have addict parents!’
‘Well.’
‘Did you feel like a loser?’
‘All the time,’ Simone says, reaching to touch her daughter’s head. ‘All the time.’ She pauses. ‘It’s very bad luck, inheriting my nature,’ she tells her, her voice thick, there, in the middle of nowhere.
‘I know. I could’ve been more like Dad, not even caring when people insult him.’
Simone laughs softly. ‘I think you are a little like Dad.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Very lovely. Very kind.’
They lapse into silence for a few seconds.
‘It’s good you know that Terlingua is nearby,’ Simone tells her.
‘Yeah,’ Lucy says. ‘I know a bit. Been here all summer, plus Easter.’ She shrugs then and a glimmer of old Lucy appears. ‘It’s a shame Texas will always remind me of this, because it’s beautiful,’ she says, throwing her mother a look, and Simone could cry.