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As James backed the van down the driveway, first Meghan then Skye slipped through the passenger side door.
Domanska wasn’t going to get here in time.
37. SKYE
Cascade, Idaho
Aside from the Sesame Street soundtrack that April put on for the girls, the van stayed mostly silent for the first half hour on the road.
Brecia, Meghan, and I hadn’t said much either. From what he’d said on the phone earlier, we were headed to Cascade—about a two-hour drive. But we didn’t talk about that much. Instead, we stayed quiet, waiting for the moment we’d finally hear sirens in the background.
By now, they had to know he’d made a run for it.
James was clearly thinking the same thing, by the number of times he glanced in the rearview mirror. He drove exactly the speed limit, keeping a white-knuckled grip on ten-and-two.
It was only after Kimmie and Emma nodded off to the sound of Cookie Monster jamming out about healthy food that April finally spoke up.
She turned to look back at the car seats, where the girls were sleeping—and where Meghan sat between them, looking out the window at the hills that were giving way to tall lodgepole pines.
April’s eyes wandered over the boxes of canned food, camping supplies, and suitcases that had been tucked into every bit of floorspace in the van. Then she whispered, “Will you at least tell me what the detective said to you when you picked up the Kia? If you’re innocent—” She caught herself, then started again. “Since you’re innocent, why can’t we just talk to them? Make them understand you never even met that girl. Why do we have to—” She gestured behind her at the packed minivan. “I feel like I’m in The Fugitive right now.” She cracked a tentative smile, but it faltered when he didn’t smile back.
I heard Brecia sigh in frustration from the back of the van, where she had tucked herself against a pile of sleeping bags. “He’s not Richard Kimball, April. He’s the one-armed man.”
James—I still thought of him as James, even though I knew that person had never existed—narrowed his eyes slightly and didn’t respond.
April shook her head. “I mean, they gave us the Kia back. They wouldn’t have done that if they’d found something, right?” It was impossible to hide the desperation in her voice.
He pursed his lips and kept his eyes on the road. “That lady detective in Utah has wanted to pin this on me ever since your BFF Nina,”—he spat out the name like it was a bad word—“got so bored with her life she decided to ruin mine.” He cut his eyes toward April. “And now yours, too,” he added in a tight-lipped singsong.
April clutched the seatbelt with one hand as he braked for a tree branch that had fallen into the one-lane road. We’d turned off the paved highway a few miles back and onto a narrow dirt road. We hadn’t passed another car since. The treeline around us was getting thicker as we climbed in elevation. I’d been through Cascade once when I was ten, when my mom took me camping in Ponderosa. I had no idea there were cabins on this part of the mountain.
April tried again. “Did you tell your lawyer we were leaving town? How long are we going to be staying? If Emma misses more than a few days of kindergarten, I’m going to have to give the school a doctor’s note, or she’ll be truant.”
He glared at the road. “Can you shut up, please?”
April looked like she’d been slapped. She was quiet for a few seconds. Then she softly asked, “Is there anything you’re not telling me?”
He ignored her. After a few minutes, she took a deep breath and tried again. “The last time Marjorie tried to get in touch—after your dad died—you told her that if she ever called the house again, you’d get a restraining order. You didn’t even go to the funeral. And now we’re going to stay at her cabin?”
His jaw twitched, but he stayed silent. April kept going in a halting voice. “I’ve never pushed you to talk about her, because I know how you get when her name comes up, but I always wondered if she might have …” She trailed off and studied him apprehensively. Finally she whispered, “… had something to do with your scars.”
He stared straight ahead, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.
“Please talk to me,” April choked out. “I’m scared.”
He took one hand off the steering wheel. For a second, I thought he was going to hit her. She must have wondered the same thing, because she recoiled against the passenger seat.
He sent her a withering look, as if he couldn’t believe how dramatic she was being, then snatched a bottle of water from the cupholder, letting go of the wheel with both hands to open it.
“Is he going to hurt them?” Meghan suddenly asked in a small voice from behind me. She had turned away from the window and was watching Kimmie while she slept, fuzzy purple blankie in hand.
Brecia slid down from the pile of sleeping bags and squeezed into the space on the other side of Emma’s car seat. “I don’t think so. He brought all their stuff.”
“So April would go with him,” Meghan responded listlessly. “He didn’t buy me drinks because he wanted me to enjoy them.” She closed her eyes, and I noticed the same reflective shimmer I sometimes saw in myself when I looked in the mirror. “We shouldn’t have come,” she whispered. “Whatever’s going to happen, I don’t want to see it.”
* * *
The sun was shining brightly, blazing noon by the time we reached the overgrown dirt driveway that led to the cabin.
