highway.
What else did she have? What else did she know? Oh, yes, the cousin.
She remembered from the phone the way Abby’s cousin had this smoky confident voice that kept on asking her to come back to Oxford. At one point, she almost thought the cousin had her convinced, but Abby would start crying and say she didn’t want to talk to the police again or any of their family. Especially some pussy uncle. What did Abby say? She hated them all, or something like that.
There was something else she spotted in that old photo album about both the cousin and the mother. They had the damned most intense eyes Perfect had seen. Almost like they saw everything. Three hundred and sixty degrees. Kind of grabbed you right through the photo.
Kind of a weight or maybe a heft to what they saw. Sort of sleepy. Sort of intelligent. The eye thing. Yeah, she could do the eye thing.
The thick yellow light stretched its way across the pavement and onto Perfect’s face as she buttoned the top three buttons of her tight red angora sweater and practiced the husky voice.
“You’ve been out too long, Abby,” she said, feeling her eyes grow heavier. “Darlin’, it’s time to bring you on in from the cold.”
Chapter 7
After driving all morning and night, a big truck stop was exactly what Abby needed. One of those places that sold mesh hats with redneck sayings and beef jerky by the truckload. She wanted to grab a couple of buttery biscuits, a cup of hot black coffee, and find a clean bathroom to wash herself off. Maybe they had showers, too, she hoped, spotting a billboard made out of neon and chrome near the Tennessee border and pulling off the highway. Besides, her engine light had been on red since Holly Springs and she was pretty damned sure her whole motor was about to blow unless she got to a mechanic.
But sometimes you just had to keep riding things out and see where fate would take you.
She parked underneath a huge portico and listened to fat drops splatter the roof. Her radio blared some bad country while her windshield wipers flapped a steady beat. On the other side of a long plate glass window, hardened truckers shoveled country-fried steak and mashed potatoes with gravy into their mouths. She licked her dry lips, counted out a few crumpled dollar bills and four quarters in her hand and wondered if she could go a little farther without a meal.
She wanted one more day alone, without calling her cousin or without answering questions about her parents. Was she all right? Did she need anything? They were fine people, weren’t they? Goddamn it. She didn’t need another fucking person telling her how fine her parents were. She knew her mother once bought a mess of socks for a deaf boy named Pooky, and that her father once donated the five hundred dollars he won for killing the largest buck in the county to Oxford First Baptist. Everyone was trying to make saints or Mother Teresa out of them now. But all Abby could remember was how her mother bought that good Minute-Maid pink lemonade and hugged the crap out of her when she heard that Abby’s boyfriend had split for a Tri-Delt from McComb. Or that the last time she saw him, her daddy wore his reading glasses upside down to make her laugh like when she was five.
The memory burned away in a truck stop window dripping with water and steam, pink from the neon. The neon read: SHOWERS, ATM, CHECKS CASHED, CHEAP CIGARETTES. After she pumped out five bucks, Abby bolted for the front entrance as the hard gray rain soaked her face and stung her eyes.
P erfect Leigh watched Abby make a run for it, the girl’s feet splashing through the oily puddles. Inside her car, Perfect crushed a thin cigarette into a dirty ashtray and turned down the Best of Nancy Sinatra CD. Perfect looked at her reflection in the rearview mirror and decided she’d done a great job with the makeup. Dull gloss on her lips. A little mascara. These college girls liked their simplicity for some reason.
Hair wasn’t bad either. Only took a handful of brown-tinted mousse and some bobbing shears she kept in a little overnight case. Hell, the whole transformation was done a few hours ago at Lake Puskis when Abby was walking around feeding the squirrels and communing with nature. The clothes were in the car and the rearview worked as her canvas.
Perfect closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and ran her hands down over her shoulders, breasts, and stomach. She kept her hands on her stomach for a few moments, just feeling her breath. She started inhaling a little faster.
She was quick, she was perky, and brimming with energy and kind of a motor mouth.
Abby knew women like this. Never give Abby a second to doubt you or your intentions. You are Ellie. You were born in Houston, Texas. Your father owned a wicker furniture company and your mother was a former Miss Texas runner-up. When you were a child, you moved to Memphis and grew up in the wealthy suburb of Germantown. You like Chinese food but not Italian. You like Pop Tarts and Tootsie Rolls and anything sweet. And, one time, you rescued a puppy from drowning when the levee broke near your aunt’s mink farm in Louisiana.
Perfect smelled her new perfume and she liked it. She liked this body. She liked the way Ellie smelled and spoke with this clarity and cleanness. Ellie. Ellie was special.
T he truck stop was loaded with bad food. A Dairy Queen, Subway, Taco Bell, and a big restaurant called Grandma’s Country Cookin’. Grandma’s was a place where a bunch of scruffy guys wearing flannel shirts took their coffee and talked about their latest loads. Auto supplies to her right and Western wear along the back wall. Who needed all this stuff on the road? Abby thought as she shook the water from her head and strolled through the bright, fluorescent coldness.
Felt good to stretch her legs and be among people again. Didn’t matter if they were toothless or a little haggard. She smiled at a little Asian woman who passed her carrying a crate of Yoo-Hoo.
Abby could barely afford one. All she had was two dollars. There had to be something in the cooler for that. She wasn’t thirsty anyway. Maybe one of those horrible egg salad sandwiches or a microwavable roast beef sandwich. She grabbed the egg salad.
“Abby?” someone asked. “Is that you?”
She turned and faced a young woman, who was maybe in her late twenties, with brown hair cut all one length. She wore a gray sweater, dark jeans, and running shoes. Abby studied her face and smiled. She was too old to know from class.
“I’m sorry,” Abby said, shrugging.
“Ellie,” the woman said. “The Grove? Met you and your cousin last year?”
It was a voice she recognized from every bourbon-drinking, cigarette-smoking Southern woman she’d ever known. The woman’s thick lips curved into a welcoming smile. Her big blue eyes dropped into hers with a familiar look Abby knew but couldn’t recognize. The woman’s skin was tanned and her eyebrows thin and arched.
“Sure,” Abby said, lying.
The woman suddenly reached around Abby’s neck and squeezed her close. She smelled like Calvin Klein perfume and Abby felt the woman’s weighty breasts smash against her like two balloons filled with concrete. “God, I’m so sorry about your parents. My God. What you’ve been through. I spoke to Maggie just the other day and she said she was just worried to death. Cain’t believe I just ran into you like this. On my way to Memphis, you know, and stopped off for gas. You look so tired. Are you all right? Abby, I’m so sorry.”
For some reason, she didn’t know why, maybe because she was so tired and maybe she wanted to be held, but Abby hugged this woman back, who she didn’t know shit about. It felt good to be with someone familiar.
“My car. I think the engine is about to burn up,” Abby said.
“Oh, Lord,” Ellie said. “Sit down and let’s have a cup of coffee and figure it all out. I know this place is absolutely awful, but would you like lunch? I mean, a hamburger? No one can screw up a hamburger or breakfast, or at least that’s what my daddy always told me.”
Abby opened the freezer and replaced the egg salad sandwich.
“Sure,” she said.
A s Perfect rambled, she watched Abby’s eyes follow the water sluicing down the foggy window like it was worms racing. Perfect loved to ramble like Ellie. It was like letting loose and peeing outdoors in the rain. She talked about when her father died from cancer and how she’d lost twenty pounds in two months. She spoke of
