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“Is that something you know or just intuition?”
Rose waggled her hand in the air.
“An intuition strong enough to risk her getting killed by a hit-and-run driver or grabbed by some
child-molesting perv?” Crow said this without irony. “Or what about leukemia, or some other cancer?
You know they’re susceptible to stuff like that.”
“If you asked Jimmy Numbers, he’d say the actuarial tables are on our side.” Rose smiled and gave
his thigh an affectionate pat. “You worry too much, Daddy. We’ll go on to Sidewinder, as planned,
then head down to Florida in a couple of months. Both Barry and Grampa Flick think this might be a
big year for hurricanes.”
Crow made a face. “That’s like scavenging out of Dumpsters.”
“Maybe, but the scraps in some of those Dumpsters are pretty tasty. And nourishing. I’m still
kicking myself that we missed that tornado in Joplin. But of course we get less warning on sudden
storms like that.”
“This kid. She saw us.”
“Yes.”
“And what we were doing.”
“Your point, Crow?”
“Could she nail us?”
“Honey, if she’s more than eleven, I’ll eat my hat.” Rose tapped it for emphasis. “Her parents
probably don’t know what she is or what she can do. Even if they do, they’re probably minimizing it
like hell in their own minds so they don’t have to think about it too much.”
“Or they’ll send her to a psychiatrist who’ll give her pills,” Crow said. “Which will muffle her and
make her harder to find.”
Rose smiled. “If I got it right, and I’m pretty sure I did, giving Paxil to this kid would be like
throwing a piece of Saran Wrap over a searchlight. We’ll find her when it’s time. Don’t worry.”
“If you say so. You’re the boss.”
“That’s right, honeybunch.” This time instead of patting his thigh, she squeezed his basket.
“Omaha tonight?”
“It’s a La Quinta Inn. I reserved the entire back end of the first floor.”
“Good. My intent is to ride you like a roller coaster.”
“We’ll see who rides who,” Crow said. He was feeling frisky from the Trevor kid. So was Rose. So
were they all. He turned the radio on again. Got Cross Canadian Ragweed singing about the boys from
Oklahoma who rolled their joints all wrong.
The True rolled west.
3
There were easy AA sponsors, and hard AA sponsors, and then there were ones like Casey Kingsley,
who took absolutely zero shit from their pigeons. At the beginning of their relationship, Casey
ordered Dan to do ninety-in-ninety, and instructed him to telephone every morning at seven o’clock.
When Dan completed his ninety consecutive meetings, he was allowed to drop the morning calls.
Then they met three times a week for coffee at the Sunspot Café.
Casey was sitting in a booth when Dan came in on a July afternoon in 2011, and although Casey
hadn’t made it to retirement just yet, to Dan his longtime AA sponsor (and first New Hampshire
employer) looked very old. Most of his hair was gone, and he walked with a pronounced limp. He
needed a hip replacement, but kept putting it off.