Page 41 of Open Road

She’s in her socks, one pigtail holding and one abandoned, Mr. Rabbit under her arm, and a look on her face that says she was in the middle of something important, and this interruption had better justify itself.

Then she sees me, and the expression upgrades considerably. “Roam.” Full name, serious intonation, the greeting of someone who has decided you’re worth the formal version. “Mama’s wearing a fancy dress.”

“That so.”

“It’s red.” She considers this. “Dark red. Like a…” She looks at the ceiling. “Like a really dark cherry.”

I look past her to Janie who is at the mirror on the back of the bathroom door, profile to me. The dress is burgundy, deep and warm, the kind of color that has no interest in apologizing for itself. It wraps at the side, and the cut is right for her in a way I couldn’t have specified in advance but recognize on sight. She’s looking at her own reflection with an expression I’ve seen before, the internal one, the one that means Craig’s voice is in the room with her even when Craig isn’t.

The expression costs me something I don’t examine right now.

Rose tugs my hand. “Does it look fancy?”

“Yeah,” I say. “It does.”

Janie turns, sees me in the doorway, and color comes into her face that isn’t the dress.

“We were trying it…” she starts.

“Mama got three whole bags,” Rose announces. She holds up three fingers in case the number needs illustration. “Devil said she has good taste. I have good taste too.” She looks at me for confirmation.

“Best taste I’ve seen,” I say.

Rose accepts this as the fact it is.

I crouch down to her level. “You know those cookies Devil keeps in the back of the cupboard?”

Rose goes very still. The particular stillness of a small person receiving information they suspect is significant and don’t want to move in case it evaporates.

“The ones she thinks we don’t know about?” I say.

“I know about those,” Rose says, her voice low and conspiratorial. Mr. Rabbit is gripped with renewed intensity.

“Go ask her. Tell her Roam said it’s a cookie occasion.”

The process of Rose leaving the room takes approximately four seconds and involves no further communication, no retrieval of shoes, and a considerable volume increase as she hits the hall. The word cookie travels the full length of the compound and probably into the yard. Somewhere in the building, Devil’s long-suffering laugh answers it.

The door swings most of the way shut behind her.

Quiet.

Janie is still at the mirror. She hasn’t moved back to it. She’s standing in the center of the room, hands at her sides, the dress doing what the dress does in the late afternoon light coming through the window, watching me.

“You didn’t have to send her away,” she says.

“No.”

“But you did.”

“Wanted five minutes without a color-coded analysis of the cherry spectrum.”

The almost-smile. The one she still hasn’t fully committed to but is getting closer to doing so.

I cross the room.

Not fast. Nothing about this is fast. There’s no shortage of time, and she needs to feel that, has needed to feel it since the night I pulled up behind a dead car on a dark highway andwatched her put the vehicle between herself and a stranger. Janie reads the approach. She’s read it her whole life, and for the last four years, she’s been reading it in self-defense, calibrating danger from the angle of a body moving toward her.

What I want her to read now is different.