To prove to myself that everything was normal between us, I tilted my head to the left, resting it against the hard curve of his shoulder. A sigh slipped out through my nose, and my face burned again.
“Tired?” he asked.
I nodded, not trusting how my voice might sound if I tried to speak right now.
“Then sleep, Tarah.” He sounded like he was trying not to laugh. “I promise I’ll wake you up if anything worth reporting happens.”
I smiled. “Okay.” I hesitated, my smile fading, then had to say it. “Hayden, for what it’s worth…I’m sorry I got you involved in all of this.”
Silence for a long minute. “Don’t worry about it. It was worth it.”
I closed my eyes, and the need for sleep won.
When I woke up some time later, I could practically hear Hayden’s thoughts churning.
“What are you thinking about?” I mumbled, comfy and warm, unwilling to move yet wanting to hear his reassuring voice for awhile.
He hesitated before replying, “When did you wake up?”
“Just now. You didn’t answer my question.”
He hesitated again, and the fog of sleep slipped further away from the edges of my mind. Now I really wanted to know what was going on inside that head of his.
“You. I was thinking about you.” His voice sounded gruff. Embarrassed?
“Oh?” I smiled, glad he probably couldn’t see my face right now since I was still leaning against his shoulder.
“Yeah, I was just wondering if…”
“Mmm?”
“If you…still sleep with stuffed animals. You know, since you’re using me like a giant teddy bear here.” Definite humor in his voice now.
I glanced down and realized I’d wrapped my right arm across his waist at some point in my sleep.
I sat up straight. “Sorry!”
He chuckled. “It’s all right. Actually, it was kind of nice. Made me feel all soft and squishy, and a little furry too…”
I lightly swatted his arm, grinning in embarrassment. “Yeah, yeah, enough with the Teddy jokes. I haven’t slept with him in years.” This was what I got for oversharing with Hayden when we were kids. He would never let me live it down now.
“Well, since you’re up now, Sleeping Beauty, why don’t you take a look outside?”
The weather must have gotten even colder the further north we’d traveled, because white flakes began to fall. Growing up in East Texas, we saw snow maybe once or twice a year at best.
“It’s snowing!” It was hard to keep my voice down, especially with the way the flakes were pelting the windshield as we drove straight into the wind. “Oh wow, that is beautiful. Look how huge those flakes are. They look like chicken feathers.”
Hayden’s left hand jerked on the wheel, and I felt the back end of the truck get squirrelly. His whole body tensed up as he grabbed the wheel with both hands and hissed out a curse. The truck righted itself as he let off of the gas a little.
“Sorry. Road’s getting slick,” he muttered. “Better warn Bud. We’ll have to slow down till the roads clear up.”
If they cleared up. After all, we were headed almost straight north in December. The weather and the roads might both get worse from here on out.
I grabbed the walkie talkie and warned Bud.
“Can you also check to be sure they’re all belted in back there?” he asked, nodding towards the backseat.
“Sure.” Twisting, I leaned over the seat to help get Kristina and her mother belted in.
Beside me, Pamela stirred, yawned then frowned. “What’s going on? Is Kristina okay?”
“She’s fine,” I told her over my shoulder. “Just belting them in since the roads are getting bad.”
“Thanks,” Hayden told me when I was done. “Don’t forget to put your belt back on too.”
Twisting back around to face the front again, I followed orders then gave him a snarky salute with a grin to try and keep the tension in the cab down. “Aye aye captain. Copilot secured.”
“Are you sassing me?” he said, trying to joke but completely failing to hide the tightness in his tone as the wheel jerked beneath his hands again. He let our speed drop to ten miles under the limit.
The back end of the truck slid sideways again. Hayden whispered another curse then winced as we heard a small voice cry out from the back seat, “Mommy?”
“Shh, honey, it’s okay,” Pamela murmured, turning to look over the seat at her patient.
But Kristina wasn’t soothed. She wanted her mother and fought to sit up despite Pamela’s murmured pleas for her to stay down.
“Mommy, I’m scared,” Kristina whimpered, wrapping her arms around her mother.
One of her mother’s hands drifted up to stroke her daughter’s arm. Then the woman began to hum something. It took me a half minute to recognize the song as “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”. Kristina must have heard it a lot; she managed to stop crying and stumbled through singing along with her mother.
Hayden glanced at me, his eyes wide as he realized Kristina’s mother was finally starting to come out of her zombie-like state. Then he had to refocus on the road as the gathering ice pellets turned the interstate into an endless hockey rink with our too light ended truck trying its hardest to be the puck.
By the time we had to merge onto I-229, Hayden’s knuckles had turned white and his jaw muscles had knotted.
Then we spotted the cop cars blocking the road up ahead, their lights flashing.
I swallowed hard, praying Hayden was right about his father not turning him in and tracking us down. If he was wrong and Senator Shepherd had called in the locals to help intercept us…
But before we reached the cops, other lights brightened the night…large, electronic road signs warning that I-229 was closed due to icy conditions and all traffic was to detour onto Minnesota Ave. I sighed in relief as Hayden took the exit I could now see the cops directing everyone towards.
“Can you reroute the GPS and find us a new way to Grandma Letty’s?” he said.
I fiddled with the GPS for a minute. “Okay, it looks like we can take 14th Street to Phillips, and then to 10th Street and cut across that way.”
But 10th Street was where it got confusing. Just as Hayden was about to take a right onto it, I shrieked, “Stop, it’s a one way!”