Billy Summers

She looked straight at me. ‘No thanks needed. I’d do anything for you, Billy.’

I wanted to tell her not to say that, but I didn’t. I said, ‘We need to get out of here in the morning. Early. It’s a long drive back to Sidewinder, and—’

‘Just shy of two thousand miles,’ Alice said. ‘I googled it.’

‘—and I don’t know how much of the driving I can do.’

‘None would be good, at least to start with. Unless you want to open that wound up again. You need stitches, but I’m not trying that.’

‘I don’t expect you to. I can live with some scarring. A couple of inches farther in and I would have been in real trouble. Marge. Jesus. Fucking Marge. Don’t turn down the bedspread, Alice, I’ll sleep on top of it.’ If I could sleep, that was. The pain wasn’t terribly intense now that the sting of the hydrogen peroxide had worn off, but it was steady. ‘Just spread the towel.’

She did, then sat where I had been sitting. ‘Maybe I should stay. Sleep on the other side.’

I shook my head. ‘No. Bring me the Tylenol, then sleep in your own room. You’ll need to sleep if you’re going to be doing the driving.’ I glanced at my watch and saw it was quarter past eleven. ‘I’d like to be out of here by eight, at the latest.’

*

We were out by seven. Alice took the wheel as far as the New York metro area, then turned the driving chore over to me, with obvious relief. I got us across New Jersey and into Pennsylvania. At the welcome area just over the state line, we changed places again. The wound in my side was seeping again, and before we stopped for the night – at another off-the-grid motel – we’d have to pick up more gauze. I was going to be okay, but I was going to have one hell of a battle scar to go with my half-missing big toe. And no Purple Heart this time.

That night we stayed at Jim and Melissa’s Roadside Cabins, 10% Discount For Cash. The following day I felt better, my side not so stiff and painful, and I was able to do some of the driving. We stopped on the outskirts of Davenport, at a ramshackle motel called the Bide-A-Wee.

I had spent most of that day thinking and deciding what came next. There was money in three separate accounts, one of them accessible only to me as Dalton Smith, an identity that was (by the grace of God) still clean. At least as far as I knew. There would be more in the Woodley account if Nick came through, and I thought he would. His Roger Klerke problem had been solved, after all, and to his great financial benefit.

Before she went into her room, I hugged Alice and kissed her on both cheeks.

She looked at me with dark blue eyes I’d come to love, just as I’d loved Shan Ackerman’s dark brown ones. ‘What was that for?’

‘I just felt like doing it.’

‘Okay.’ She stood on tiptoes and kissed me on the mouth, firm and long. ‘And I felt like doing that.’

I don’t know what my expression was, but it made her smile.

‘You’re not going to sleep with me, I understand that, but you need to understand that I’m not your daughter, and my feelings for you aren’t in the least bit daughterly.’

She started away. I wasn’t going to see her again, but there was one more thing I needed from her. ‘Hey Alice?’ And when she turned back: ‘How are you doing with it? With Klerke?’

She thought it over, running a hand through her hair as she did it. She was back to black. ‘I’m getting there,’ she said. ‘Trying.’ I decided that was good enough.

That night I set my phone alarm for one A.M., long after she would be asleep. When I got up, I checked the bandages. No blood and hardly any pain. Pain had been replaced by the deep dry itch of healing. There was no stationery in the Bide-A-Wee, of course, but I had a Staples pad from the Gerard Tower in my suitcase. I tore out a couple of pages and wrote my goodbye letter.

Dear Alice,

By the time you read this, I’ll be gone. One of the reasons I wanted to stop here is because of the truck stop, Happy Jack’s, half a mile down the road. There I’m sure I can find a long-haul independent who’ll let me ride along with him for a hundred dollars. It’s got to be west or north, either of those will be okay, just not south or east. I’ve been there and done that.

I am not deserting you. Believe it.