Page 9 of Hideaway Whirlwind
“How much can you lift?” I ask, pulling out my hair tie to finger-comb my messy strands so they’ll hang down my face as a disguise since the truck stop likely has security cameras. As paranoid as Priscilla is about me snitching, based on the little information I know about her chosen line of work, she’s downright terrified of what herbosswould think if she wereto leave her safe haven of Nevada to come after us. I doubt she considers me or Kendall—who she doesn’t actually love or care about—worth risking her life, but one can never be sure. “At least two hundred,” I guess, since he manhandles me without so much as a grunt. Bully for him.
Elliott’s eyes go straight to my fingers in my hair, the red creeping down his neck. “More,” he says, helping Dustin out next, then Sydney.
“Three?” I ask, my voice lifting. He nods. “Four?” When he nods again, I whistle through teeth starting to chatter with the cold, though my own cheeks grow warm to see him blush. “Impressive.”
I carry my inexplicable giggly mood as easily as Elliott carries Kendall as we speed-walk across the parking lot to the truck stop’s convenience store, the wind whipping diesel fumes and strands of my hair back into a messy nest. We stop at the restrooms first, where I flat out give up hope on detangling my hair, more conspicuous now than if it were in a bun, and I accept defeat, pulling it back.
Then, shockingly, Elliott pulls three twenty-dollar bills out of his wallet and hands one to each of my children, even though he’s carrying a stuffed to-go sack from the attached deli sandwich shop. “Have at it,” he says to the kids with the tiniest grin, though he does hold Kendall’s hand and helps her with her selections.
I follow behind with my arms crossed, trying to keep an eye on each child, which is impossible with them running around excitedly. “You really don’t have to do that,” I tell him, though I don’t have that kind of cash to spend, either.
Elliott shrugs, opening a cooler on the left to pluck the strawberry and chocolate milk cartons the kids are askingfor that are too high up for them to reach. “I want to.”
I scuff the toe of my combat boot on the peeling vinyl tiles. “Marigold told me there’s a diner or something that would hire me. I’ll pay you back when I can.”
I can’t read the thoughts behind Elliott’s blue eyes when he asks, “Granny’s?”
“Who’s Granny?”
“The name of the diner.”
“Oh. Then, yeah.”
His eyes dart down to my chest, his cheeks burning hotter for some reason.
When we get to the checkout counter, I flip the collar of Elliott’s borrowed flannel up and keep my head turned to the side so the cashier—a man almost as big and grizzly as Elliott—won’t see the healing cut on my cheek or the bruises around my neck and start asking questions. The cashier smiles broadly and produces a plastic fishbowl of lollipops from under the counter, one free for each of the kids. Missing his right eye with a long-healed scar slashed across it, he winks his left after I remind the kids to saythank you, though they certainly don’t need any more sugar.
“I have seven grandkids about the same age and another one on the way,” the cashier says to Elliott as he scans our goods. “Each of them is a blessing, am I right?”
Elliott stands cold beside me and doesn’t respond.
The cashier grins and waggles a finger at me. “I’m guessing you take after your mom more than your dad. Another blessing.” He laughs at his own joke, but his mirth melts when he shifts his dark gray eye to Elliott, whose expression has turned stony.
“Oh, uh, yeah…I do,” I say, realizing too late that he thinks Elliott is my father, though I’m not going to spend the energy to explain why he’s incorrect in his assumption.
Elliott doesn’t give me time anyway, if I were so inclined, when he snatches the two new sacks off the counter after paying without a word and leads us out of the store.
* * *
“Can you hold it a little longer?” I ask when Dustin crosses his ankles, having chugged his carton of strawberry milk when I told him to sip from it, needing to use the restroom not thirty minutes after Elliott had to stop on the side of the road for us to relieve ourselves once already. I do, too, though I haven’t said mum to Elliott, who hasn’t spoken either since our weird interaction with the cashier.
Elliott is already inching down an exit off the interstate before I’ve had to lean up front to begrudgingly ask him, then he helps us all out, since if one needs to go, we probably all should.
Not. Fun. To say the least.
It’s been slow-going as it is with the sky unexpectedly dumping buckets of snow into the night, slicking the roads so that we are moving forward at a crawl in bumper-to-bumper traffic since we can hardly see ten feet in front of us. It’s bad enough squatting on the ground, but doing so while dressed in as many layers as possible to keep warm, hardly able to bend a knee or elbow? Miserable.
Using Elliott’s flannel as an umbrella, I hold it over Sydney and Dustin’s heads when they take their turns, but can’t manage it myself when I have to hold onto a tree trunk for balance, so I’m shivering uncontrollably when I make it back,my nose frozen at the tip.
“Damn, Birdie, you’re going to freeze to death like this,” Elliott tuts, hefting me up.
Freezeis right since we both go rigid while I hover in Elliott’s hold two feet off the ground, snow collecting on our eyelashes. He snaps out of it first, depositing me on the front passenger seat before stomping off and disappearing deeper into the dark woods. It takes a long time for him to come back.
Elliott
We’ve only just merged onto the interstate when there’s a pileup ahead involving two eighteen-wheelers that look to have skidded out of their lanes into each other, and traffic is forced to detour.
“I’m calling it a night,” I tell Russell after putting him on speaker phone so I can keep both hands at the ready. “Need you to find me a place close by since my internet is crap out here.”
