Chapter 10:
Noah knew when they'd come to the highway because the curves straightened out and he didn't have to tense himself against slipping from side to side-or, in his position, head to toe-anymore. That was the upside. The downside was that the car could go faster now, and it did. Noah had always thought he liked fast rides. He wasn't enjoying this one at all.
Lying on the floor among the shopping bags, his too-loose hat covering his eyes, he never saw the moose step into the road.
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Catalina Rivera-or Cat, as she called herself-danced from foot to foot to keep warm as she waited in the park. Her coat was too short and too thin for standing still, and her boots were just rubber ones with no linings.
Her mother crossed the road and joined her.
"Do you want to see Santa?" she asked.
Cat shook her head. She hadn't believed in Santa for years. She knew he was just an ordinary man from the village in a beard and red suit.
"I can't keep Tyler out in this cold for long."
"That's okay. You can take him home. I'll wait here."
Mariana looked at her daughter doubtfully.
"You'll be all right by yourself?"
"Of course, Mommy. And I won't be by myself after he comes."
"What if he doesn't come?"
"He'll come." Cat had no doubt about that. "He promised he would. He always does what he promises."
Mariana didn't know whether to smile or sigh. Her daughter was lucky to be so young that she still knew boys who always did what they promised. Or to think she did.
"You'll call me if he doesn't, though? You have that quarter I gave you?"
Mariana had a cell phone the Maxwells had given her, since it was convenient for them to be able to reach her sometimes when she was out with the baby, but she couldn't afford one for her daughter.
Cat nodded. "I have it. But I won't need it."
"All right then, chiquita. I'd better take Ty back. It's too cold for him out here, and he needs his nap."
Cat nodded, and went back to bouncing from one foot to the other. Her present for Noah was in her pocket, along with the postcard he'd sent her in August, saying where and when to meet him.
It would the first time they'd been able to see each other properly in a year. Most eight-year-olds would have forgotten or given up by then, but Noah wasn't most eight-year-olds, and neither was Cat. They were true pirates who had been sailing the high seas together every summer and the occasional Christmas since they were four. Last summer had been a series of dreadful disappointments, but they'd learned from their mistakes and come up with a better plan. Neither one of them was about to let a little thing like Noah's father becoming the President of the United States or Noah being followed everywhere by the Secret Service stop them from seeing each other now.
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Sabrina saw the moose and screamed. Max saw it, swore, and slammed on the brakes. The car fishtailed on the icy road and skidded into a snowbank, missing the moose by inches. The hood buried itself in the snow, crumpling when it reached the frozen inner core. The airbags inflated.
Max hit his belt and the steering-wheel bag hard, and said, "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck it!" Sabrina kept on screaming.
Noah had been thrown over the front seat and bounced off the airbag into Sabrina's lap.
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Up in the woods, Reginald Morton shifted a little, spat, and wondered if it was time to let himself have a little whiskey. It was cold as hell up here on this rocky outcrop, with the wind in his face and the layers of ice underneath. He'd brought a tarp and blankets, of course, and made the hide as snug as he could, but the cold seeped through anyhow. Why the good Lord woulda made a place like this, he couldn't imagine. Georgia now, there was country worth living in.
One slug wouldn't hurt. He took his flask off his hip and knocked it back, felt the heat burn a path down his throat to his chest, and out along his limbs to his fingers and toes. Ah, that was better.
He wiped his gloved hand across his mouth, steadied the binoculars, and took another look.
This bit of rock had quite the view: down over the treetops to the roofs of the village, its church towers and spires clustered together, the bandstand in the park. Beyond that, the grey winter harbor, a few snowy islands dotted with dark pines, and then, beyond the islands and the sandbar, the wide expanse of the ocean, which today looked like old pewter hammered into silver-tipped ridges and shot through near the horizon with lines of dull gold.
Last summer an artist had found this spot, and come every day for a week to paint that water in all its breathtaking changes of color and light.
Reggie never glanced at it. His whole attention was focused on the scene nearer at hand.
To be cont'd. . . .