An hour into the drive they stopped at a gas station. Rourke went inside to use the bathroom and buy cigarettes. Left the keys in the car because who’s gonna steal it with a kid in the trunk and a girl too scared to move.
Tasha moved.
She climbed over the console into the driver’s seat and she drove off into the dark with her little brother in the trunk and no plan past away.
She got nine miles before the tire blew.
“I don’t know how to change a tire,” she said, shaking so hard her teeth knocked. “I never learned. I don’t have a phone, he took my phone, I’ve just been standing out here for two hours praying somebody would stop and praying it wouldn’t be his headlights when they did.”
I looked north down that empty highway, the way she kept looking. And I finally understood what she’d been doing this whole time.
She wasn’t waiting for help.
She was watching for him.
I’m going to be honest about something, because I told you I would be. There’s an old, ugly part of me that wanted Rourke to show up. Wanted to see his headlights crest that hill so I could stand in the road and wait for him and explain, with my hands, exactly what I think about a grown man who folds a four-year-old into a trunk.
But that’s my anger talking, and my anger has never once helped a child. What these two kids needed wasn’t me getting my satisfaction. What they needed was to be gone, and to be safe, and to have somebody think two steps ahead instead of one.
So I made myself cold and I made myself smart.
