wide band of red crossed her belly. The skin over her hip bones looked tender and raw, as if layers had been sandpapered off. “I’ll bet that stings.”
Sandy nodded. Donna began to lift the jeans.
“I’ve gotta go.”
“Well, pick a tree. Just a second.” She climbed up to the car and took a box of Kleenex from the glove compartment. “You can use these.”
Carrying the box of tissue with one hand and holding up her jeans with the other, Sandy walked along the bottom of the ditch. She vanished in the fog. “Hey, here’s a path!” she called.
“Don’t go far.”
“Just a little ways.”
Donna heard her daughter’s feet crushing the forest mat of dead twigs and pine needles. The sounds became faint. “Sandy! Don’t go any farther.”
The footfalls had either stopped, or faded so completely with distance that they blended with the other forest sounds.
“Sandy!”
“What?” The girl sounded annoyed, but her voice came from far away.
“Can you get back all right?”
“Geez, Mom.”
“Okay.” Donna leaned back until the seat of her corduroy pants pressed against the car. She shivered. Her blouse was too thin to keep out the cold. She would wait for Sandy, then get jackets out of the backseat. Until the girl’s return, she didn’t want to move. She waited, staring into the gray where Sandy had gone.
Suddenly, the wind tore away a shred of fog. “That was a longer-than-average pit stop,” Donna said.
Sandy didn’t answer, or move.
“What’s the matter, hon?”
She just stood there, above the ditch, motionless and mute.
“Sandy, what’s wrong?”
Feeling a prickling chill on the back of her neck, Donna snapped her head around. Nothing behind her. She looked back at Sandy.
“My God, what’s wrong?”
Pushing from the car, she ran. She ran toward the paralyzed, silent figure at the forest edge. Ran through the gray, obscuring murk. Watched the shape of her daughter twist into a crude resemblance as the fog thinned until, a dozen feet away, nothing remained of Sandy but a four-foot pine sapling.
“Oh, Jesus,” Donna muttered. And then she shrieked, “Sandy!”
“Mom,” came the distant voice. “I think I’m lost.”
“Don’t move.”
“I won’t.”
“Don’t move. Stay right where you are! I’m coming!”
“Hurry!”
A narrow path through the pines seemed to point in the voice’s direction. Donna hurried.
“Sandy!” she shouted.
“Here.”
The voice was closer. Donna walked quickly, watching the fog, stepping over a dead pine trunk blocking the path.
“Sandy?”
“Mom!”
The voice was very close now, but off to the right.
“Okay, I’ve almost reached you.”
“Hurry.”
“Just a minute.” She stepped off the path, pushing between damp limbs that tried to hold her back. “Where are you, darling?”
“Here.”
“Where?”
“Here!”
“Where?” Before the girl could answer, Donna shoved through a barrier of branches and saw her.
“Mom!”
She was clutching the pink box of Kleenex to her chest as if it would somehow keep her from harm.
“I got turned around,” she explained.
Donna hugged her. “That’s all right, honey. It’s all right. Did you take care of business?”
She nodded.
“Okay, let’s go back to the car.”
If we can find it, she thought.
But she found the path without difficulty, and the path took them to the opening above the ditch. Donna kept her eyes down as she stepped past the pine sapling she had mistaken for Sandy. Silly, she knew, but the thought of seeing it frightened her; what if it looked like Sandy again, or like someone else—a stranger, or
“Don’t be mad,” Sandy said.
“Me? I’m not mad.”
“You look mad.”
“Do I?” She smiled. Then the two of them climbed down the slope of the ditch. “I was just thinking,” Donna said.
“About Dad?”
She forced herself not to react. She didn’t gasp, didn’t suddenly squeeze her daughter’s hand, didn’t let her head snap toward the girl in shock. In a voice that sounded very calm, she said, “Why would I be thinking about Dad?”
The girl shrugged.
“Come on. Out with it.”
Ahead of them, the dark bulk of the car appeared through the fog.
“I was just thinking about him,” Sandy told her.
“Why?”
“It was scary back there.”
“Is that the only reason?”
“It was cold, like that time. And I had my pants down.”
“Oh God.”
“I got afraid he might be watching.”
“I bet that was plenty scary.”
“Yeah.”
They stopped at the side of the car. Sandy looked up at Donna. In a very small voice Sandy said, “What if he gets us here? All by ourselves?”
“Impossible.”
“He’d kill us, wouldn’t he?”
“No, of course not. Besides, it can’t happen.”
“It might, if he escaped. Or if they let him out.”
“Even if they did, he’d never find us here.”
“Oh yes he would. He told me so. He said he’d find us wherever we went. He said, ‘I’ll sniff you down.’”
“Shhhh.”
“What?” Sandy whispered.
For a moment, Donna held to the hope that it was only the sound of the ocean surf beating the rocky shore. But the surf was across the road, and far down the cliff. Besides, why hadn’t she heard it before now? The sound grew.
