“You really saw him?” I ask.
“Of course I did. Why did you ask?”
“You’ll think I’m stupid.”
“Who says I don’t already?” She laughs so I know she’s joking.
“You are one mean grandmother.”
“I know. So, why did you ask?”
She’s not the type to give up, so I try to make it sound like no big deal. “I just keep thinking I see this same guy everywhere, this tall, dark-haired, pale guy. That couldn’t be him, though.”
“You saw this guy in Charleston?”
I nod. I wish my feet could touch the floor so I wouldn’t feel so stupid and little.
She thinks for a split second. “And now you’re seeing him here?”
“I know. It’s silly and weird.”
“It’s not silly, honey, but it is most definitely weird.” She honks at another truck heading the other way. “John Weaver. He builds houses. Volunteer firefighter, good guy. Zara, honey, I don’t mean to scare you, but I want you to stay in the house at night, okay? No fooling around, no going out.”
“What?”
“Just humor an old woman.”
“Tell me why.”
“A boy went missing last week. People are worried tha t something happened to him.”
“He could’ve just run away.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. That’s not the whole reason, though. Look, my job is all about saving people, right? And I know you are used to training at night in Charleston, but there aren’t that many streetlamps here. I don’t want to be scraping my own granddaughter off the Beechland Road, got it?”
“Sure.” I stare at the trees and then I start laughing because it’s all so ridiculous. “I’m not running much anymore.”
“You aren’t doing anything much anymore is what I hear.”
“Yeah.” I pick at the string around my finger. It’s part of a rug my dad bought. It used to be white but now it’s sort of a dull gray.
I shudder. Grandma Betty and I toss back some tidbits for the rest of the ride, and I try to lecture her about the War on Terror’s impact on worldwide human rights issues. My heart’s not in it though, so most of the time we’re pretty quiet.
I don’t mind.
“Almost home,” she says. “I bet you’re tired.”
“A little.”
“You look tired. You’re pale.”
Betty’s house is a big Cape with cedar shingles and a front porch. It looks cozy and warm, like a hidden burrow in the cold woods. I know from what my mom told me that there are three bedrooms upstairs and one down. The inside is made of wood and brick with a high ceiling in the kitchen, a woodstove in the living room.
The first thing Betty does when we pull into the driveway is wave her hand at the Subaru parked there.
My mouth drops open. I manage to say, “It still has the sticker in the window.”
“It’s brand new. The driving’s tough in Maine. I wanted you to be safe. And I can’t be driving you around everywhere like some sort of damn chauffeur.”
“You swore.”
“Like a fisherman. Better get used to it,” She eyes me. “Like the car?”
I fling my arms around her and she chuckles, patting my back. “Not a big deal, sweetie. It’s still in my name, you know. Nothing big.”
“Yes, it is.” I jump out of the truck and run over to the car, hugging the cold, snow-covered metal until my fingers freeze stiff and Betty hustles me inside.
“I don’t deserve this,” I say.
“Of course you do.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Don’t make me swear at you. Just say thank you and be done with it.”
“Thank you and be done with it.”
She snorts. “Punk.”
“I just . . . I love it, Betty.” I throw my arms around her again. The car is the first good thing that’s happened in Maine. It is the first good thing that has happened in a long time.
Of course, people in third world countries have to save their entire lives for a car, and here is mine, right there in the driveway, waiting for me. My head whirls.
“I don’t deserve this, Betty,” I say again, once we’re back in her cozy living room. She bends over and starts up a fire in the woodstove, crumpling up paper, stacking kindling.
“Enough with that sort of talk, Zara,” she says. Her back cracks when she stands up. It reminds me that she’s old. It’s hard to remember that. “You deserve lots of things.”
“But there are people starving in the world. People who don’t have homes. People who—”
She holds up a finger. “You’re right. I’m not going to say you aren’t right, but just because they go without doesn’t mean you have to go without too.”
“But . . .”
“And it doesn’t mean you can’t use what you have to make other people’s lives better.” She pulls off her hat and runs her hands through her crazy-curly, grayish/orangish hair. “How are you going to do any volunteer work without a car? Or get to school? Huh?”
I shrug.
“ ’Cause I’m a busy woman, Zara,” she continues. “Although I’ve changed my schedule so I’m not going on any night calls. We’ll have dinner together, be all domestic.” She smiles a little and her voice softens. “You’re just like him.”
She means my dad. My throat closes up but I manage to whisper, “How?”
“Always trying to save the world. Always worried that you have too much when other people have too little,” she says. “And always trying to get out of going to school.”
She stomps over and gives me a quick hug, followed by a smack on the butt. She’s so football coach sometimes.
I call my mom even though I don’t really want to.
“I’m here,” I say.
“Oh, sweetie. I’m glad you made it safe. How is it?”
“Cold.”
“Sounds just like the Maine I remember.” She laughs and then pauses. I listen to silence and then she asks, “You still mad at me?”
“Yep.”
“It’s for your own good.”
“Right. Did you know a boy up here went missing last week?”