Page 112 of A Better World

“Are you lying?” Katie asked.

“No. You’ll see,” Linda said. “We’re telling you the truth. Since the fire, you’re all she’s talked about. She loves you both very much. She’d do anything for you,” Linda said, her voice cracking with emotion, because she believed what she was saying to be true.

“I know she loves me. I don’t need to be told,” Katie answered from under the blanket, her cadence the same as Gal’s.

“My mommy’s a princess,” Sebbie said.

“Be very quiet,” Josie told them as they approached the border. “Can I get an okay?”

“Okay,” little voices chimed.

They got to the border. Sally left her steaming tea in her booth. Early-morning dead of winter. It was still so dark that she had to shine her flashlight into the back and the front. Linda popped the trunk and she looked there, too. After all that, she returned to Linda’s rolled-down window.

“Why so early?” she asked, sounding annoyed. “You’re creeping all over lately.”

Linda drew a complete blank.

Josie leaned over. “I left something important at my mom’s office.”

Sally gave an eye roll. “You’re not a careful kid, are you?” And then, to Linda: “I told you this doesn’t look good. I warned you to stop doing this.”

“Yeah,” Linda said. She thought about it, gave gratitude hands for the first time. “I heard you. I appreciate you. This will be the last time.”

Sally seemed pleasantly surprised.

Josie followed Linda’s lead, gave prayer hands, too. “I hate outside,” she said. “It’s so dirty and ugly and the food’s the worst.”

Sally grinned. “So bad,” she mock-whispered. “The people are dirty. It’s not their fault. But they’re infected inside and out. Syphilis. Epigenetic viruses. I don’t know how you do it, Linda. Touching them.”

“Me neither,” Linda said. “But it’s my side hustle!”

Sally let out a laugh. She’d been shining her light on the back seat, looking at the blankets on the buckets below. “What’s that?”

“Oh, patients’ blankets,” Linda answered. “I took them back to clean them here but forgot.”

Sally made a sour face. “Are they used?”

“Yeah. Pretty dirty. We had some very sick patients. Do you want to have a look at them?”

Sally pulled the back door handle but didn’t open it.

“Sorry about the smell,” Josie said. “I think somebody puked on one of them. Was it norovirus, Mom?”

“Worse. Giardia. It’s a parasite,” she said to Sally. “We good to go? Sorry again about being so much trouble.”

Appalled by the thought of opening the door to so much sickness, Sally waved them on.

The roads were icy and black, the streetlights nonexistent. They crept impossibly slowly, like scenery-gawking Sunday drivers. The kids climbed out from under the blankets and buckled in. “You’re okay,” Linda reassured them, and then Josie, too. “We’re all okay.”

Twenty minutes later, they parked behind Danny’s truck at the halfway house, where they’d agreed to meet. Gal came racing out. The kids threw themselves at her and didn’t let go. All wept with happiness and emotion.

As Linda and Josie watched, their hands joined.My daughter, Linda thought. And then:But where are my husband and son?

Danny’s mother-in-law stayed shotgun while he opened the back door of his truck and Gal helped her kids climb onto either side of sleeping Carlos. “My babies. You’re cold. We’ll turn up the heat and get you all cozy.” Then, to Linda, “I didn’t think you’d do it. I was so scared you’d back out.”

“Me too,” Linda said. “I didn’t think I’d do it, either.”

“I lied. They’ll be mad at you.” Her voice had lost all childishness. She was a different Gal. At peace. “Crazy, scary, Jack Lust mad. Don’t go to the Winter Fest tomorrow.

---