Casualties (35 page)

They reached Harrisburg after dark on the next night. Ruth suggested that they stop in Hershey the next day. “It's close,” she told Casey. “We can drive by and smell the chocolate.” She had been there years before with Robbie, she explained. Casey thought she might be looking for ways to slow down now that they were nearing the end of the trip.

“Maybe,” he said, but he wasn't sure he could do this for her. When he'd watched Ruth sit down in front of her computer the night before and upload the files, he'd felt a shift inside, like a gear freed after years of being frozen. It was his turn now.

He guided the Jaguar into the parking lot of another motel amid the usual fleet of vanilla sedans used by salesmen. Across the lot, next to a combination gas station and a couple of restaurants, a handful of semis were parked in diagonal formation.

“There's a pizza place over there,” he said. “You hungry?”

“A little.”

“I'll go over and get a couple of slices and some drinks. You get us a room.” He peeled some bills from the shrinking roll of cash in his pocket. Then he reached for the faker.

“Let me do it,” Ruth said. “It's too far for you to walk.”

“It's no big deal,” he said. He felt her watching him as he slipped the prosthesis over the liner with the new pin and then stood up. His stump had shrunk more than he realized, but he didn't want to stop and add another sock right now. He took a cautious step, then another. “Go on, get us a room and I'll meet you back here in a few.”

Each step strengthened his resolve. He knew in his bones that he needed to try now with Emily. Even a few weeks more was too long to wait to see what the future held.

He was closer to home than he'd been in years. The smells of onions, peppers, and sausage and the way the guy behind the counter said “You got it” after he ordered were both familiar and foreign. Grits, gravy, and burritos were not staples here. Adrenaline filtered into his bloodstream. He eyed the trucker in front of him, watched him pick up a pizza box and head to the soda machines to fill his extra-large cup.

“Where you headed?” he found himself asking.

The driver reached for a straw and a plastic cover for the soda. “Hoboken, then north. But not till tomorrow morning. Been driving twelve hours straight. Need to take a break.” He rolled his eyes. “At least that's what the law says.”

“Any room for a passenger?”

“Where you headed?”

“Jersey City.”

“My boss won't like it.”

“He doesn't need to know.”

“I'll have to charge you something.”

“No problem,” Casey said. “Let's talk.”

—

He'd made the right decision, he told himself as he picked up the pizza and Cokes. He stepped back out of the restaurant and paused. One more night and he'd be standing in front of the
Jersey City house trying to screw up the courage to walk up the steps and knock. All the smells and sounds that were so familiar just minutes ago seemed the opposite now. Emily wouldn't know him from any one of these men walking from building to car or climbing into one of the semis. He wished now they'd picked up some beer or something, anything to take the edge off his nerves. He began to make his way back toward the car. How was he going to tell Ruth?

He found her leaning against the fender, her chin practically on her chest.

“Hey. Wake up.”

She lifted her head, gave him a tired smile. “You're back.”

The smile opened him up inside, made him feel strong and weak, both. “Ruth,” he began.

—

She knew he was leaving before he told her. The resolve in his voice was unmistakable. Still, she argued.

“Let me take you. Some trucker isn't going to let you off at the door.”

“He'll get me close enough,” Casey said. He sat across from her at the small table in the motel, the pizza untouched and cold between them.

“But why?”

“This is for me to do, just like seeing your family is for you to do.”

He leaned forward and reached for Ruth's hand. “At least you know they want you.”

She pulled back her hand like a child, a frightened, angry child.
They love me
, Ruth thought to herself.
But they don't know me.
Casey had worried about being a stranger in her family's home, but she was the stranger. Since Robbie's death, everything she'd built, everything she knew about herself had been shorn away like shingles in a hurricane. Casey had seen her at her lowest. He hadn't lied to her. He had tried to help her find a path. He'd been her friend. And she
needed her friend when she gave up Robbie and was left with her family's grief, and her own. She wanted to delay a little longer whatever was coming next.

“Ruth. Look at me. It's important that you understand, okay? I care about that a lot.”

She looked up. His eyes were clear and steady but his lips tightened. Bracing for her disappointment, maybe. She felt her shoulders slump.

“I understand,” she said. She pushed herself up from the table.

“Ruth,” Casey said. “It's not easy. Not for either one of us. I know that.”

Ruth couldn't speak. “You got me this far,” he said. “Closer than I've been in a long time. I just need to do the rest on my own.”

Ruth nodded, then turned away so he would not see her cry.

—

One more time, Ruth fell asleep in Casey's arms in a hotel room, listening to him read, his voice mingling with the whoosh of highway traffic. Again, she woke in the dark but this time she was alone in the bed. She heard Casey talking to someone right by the door.

“Fifteen minutes,” she heard another man say. She sat up and pulled the sheet tight around her. Casey paused on the threshold when he saw she was awake. Then he crossed to her and sat on the bed. She felt him stroke her cheek and cup the back of her head gently. He kissed her on the corner of her mouth. Ruth took his hand and pulled him close, and she felt him wanting to give in, to hold her and to be held, but something wasn't letting him. When he pulled back and switched on the bedside light, Ruth saw his bag by the door, packed and ready. He looked away from her now, down at his hands as though he'd never seen them before. He had fresh nicotine patches on his arm. He'd put on the dark blue and lime Hawaiian print shirt, his best one.

“What time is it?” she said.

“Nearly five.”

“Why didn't you wake me earlier?”

“I wanted to let you sleep,” he said. “But I couldn't leave without saying good-bye. You'd never speak to me again, right?”

Ruth sat up. “Let me take you.”

“I can't.”

Outside, the truck's horn blasted.

Casey grabbed Ruth and hugged her hard. He started to rise, but she pulled him back. “You'll call, right? No matter what happens?”

He nodded into her neck. “Yeah. I'll call. Call me, too. Tell me how you are.”

Ruth wrapped her arms around him and pressed her face against his chest. Then, just as quickly, she released him, her eyes closed. She heard his shoes fall unevenly on the carpet, the scuff of his bag as he lifted it from the floor, the creak of the door as he opened it. Diesel fumes and morning air swept over her. She grabbed the sheet around her and scrambled from the bed.

“Casey, wait.”

He turned in the doorway. “Yeah?”

Ruth crossed to him and squeezed his hand one last time. “She won't hate you.”

She saw the gap between his front teeth as he smiled. “Thanks, Ruth.” Then he turned and called out to someone she couldn't see. “I'm coming.”

Casey's absence was already waiting for Ruth there in the hotel room, in the shadows cast by the small bedside lamp. There was no going back to sleep; she only wanted to get out of here now. Then she saw his copy of
Moby-Dick
on the desk across from the rumpled bed.

Ruth rushed to pick it up—maybe she could still catch him. A sheaf of bills fluttered from between the pages, like a bookmark. Four hundred-dollar bills and a torn scrap of paper bag from last night's pizza.
Gas money
, read the scrawl.
Don't worry about the rest—I know you're good for it. I'll call you. Better yet, I'll collect in person. I've never seen New Hampshire.

The last line settled on Ruth's nerves like a calming hand. She read the note again and then looked at the cash. He wouldn't have much left for Emily. The trip hadn't gone at all the way he'd planned, had it? Or maybe he'd realized that it was never about the money.

Good for you, Casey.

Ruth put down the note and the money and looked up. A seam of light glimmered between the drapes. She walked to the window
and pulled open the curtains to see what kind of day it was going to be. She surveyed the parked cars in the dawn and the headlights streaming on the interstate beyond the pavement. It didn't matter if it rained or was clear, or if traffic might slow her down.

Understanding took hold like a friend who'd been waiting for her for a long time. She couldn't know what was coming after she buried Robbie, or when Neal realized that she would not change her mind, or when Don learned she'd turned on him and the company to which she'd given most of her adult life. Like Casey, she knew where she needed to go and, for now, that was enough.

—

Ruth put the last bag back into the Jaguar and reached in her purse for the keys. She was among the last guests to leave the motel, even though it was barely six thirty. The sky was light now but the sun was obscured by the same humid gray haze that had followed them east. A straggler in a red tie and shirtsleeves sat in his car with his door open, a computer in his lap, steam rising from a foam cup in his hand. He glanced up and Ruth suddenly wanted to hear another voice besides the one in her own head. She nodded at him.

“Good morning.”

She saw him take in her wrinkled shorts and shirt, the highway grime layered over the Jaguar's black paint. He narrowed his eyes. Well, whatever he was thinking wouldn't come close to the truth about her. More than that, she knew he didn't want to know the truth. It was so much easier not to look.
I understand
, she wanted to tell him.
But it isn't that easy.
Instead she waved. The man shook his head and took a long pull from the cup before looking back at his laptop.

Ruth climbed into the Jaguar and looked at the empty seat beside her. Then she got out, pulled back the driver's seat, and extracted the box holding Robbie's ashes from the jumble of bags and clothes she'd used to cushion it. She set it carefully in the passenger seat,
reentered the car, and put her palm over the box. Then she started the car and headed for the interstate.

It was dusk when Ruth turned onto Lost Nation Road. The crunch of sand and gravel told her she was close to the house. Years ago, this would be the moment that Robbie woke up in the car. He would stretch high in the backseat so he could see out the window. Ruth slowed, turned left up a smaller road, and began to climb past fields and through more trees. She was back in time, a five-year-old Robbie bouncing now with excitement, calling out each landmark like a train conductor.
There's the stone wall, Mommy. See it? Almost there!

There's the cemetery, Mommy. I see Grampa Mo's stone.
He would wave at the small granite marker, next to her father's in the plot of land where all the families out here buried their dead, a hilly pasture bordered by the river, woods and this winding road.

Ahead lay one more dirt road leading to her grandmother's place. Robbie's five-year-old voice once again filled her ears, triumphant.
That's it. Big Ruth's Bumpy Road.
His brown eyes would be fixed straight ahead, already picking at his seat belt, ready to climb out the minute the car rolled into the driveway.

Ruth guided the dusty Jaguar up the hill. As she rounded the final curve, a rabbit launched itself from the middle of the road and Ruth hit the brakes. She watched the animal disappear into the grass-filled ditch behind a wooden post and dented black mailbox that read
Nolan
. The image of young Robbie vanished with it, but Ruth still felt him. She would always feel him here.

“This is it,” Ruth said. The sound of her voice startled her after all the hours of silence.

She turned left into the small driveway. A low white house stood on a rise just to the left of her, a screened porch clinging to the front, but it was the side door leading from the kitchen that Ruth kept her eye on. Nothing. No movement. Fear lit through her. She should have come sooner. She should have called. Where was her grandmother?
Ruth struggled with the seat belt and then with the door. Her muscles, stiff from nearly eleven hours of driving by herself, didn't seem to work. She scrambled to her feet.

A truck rumbled up behind her. She turned in time to see Kevin pull into the driveway. He peered through the windshield, his glasses glinting under the bill of his hat. Then he was out of the truck faster than she'd ever seen him move in his life.

“Ruth!”

In a few long steps he was at her side. He wrapped both arms around her and even though it woke every bruise on her ribs, Ruth held on. A rapping began inside the house. When Kevin released her and stood back, she saw her grandmother pushing open the side door from behind her walker.

“You better go in or she'll drag herself down those steps,” Kevin said. He started to lead her toward the house.

“Wait.” Ruth turned to the car and reached across the driver's seat to the passenger side. She brought out the metal box. He looked at her. His eyes grew wet behind his glasses.

“Give it to me,” he said. “I'll carry him.”

Ruth nodded. She closed her eyes and let Kevin lift the weight from her arms.

“Ruthie!” Her grandmother's voice rang out like a cracked bell.

Ruth opened her eyes and saw Big Ruth balancing in the doorway, white wisps of hair clinging to her scalp, a bright green sweater hanging from her shoulders.

“Come here, girl. Come to me.”

Then Ruth was on the steps, leaning in. Her grandmother's fingers traveled over Ruth's face, as if making sure of her. Big Ruth stroked her cheeks, brushed her hair back from her temples, lifted the sunglasses from her face. Ruth didn't move. She saw the faded blue of her grandmother's eyes shimmer with tears when she touched Ruth's bruises. Her own tears rose up. They spilled into her grandmother's waiting hands.