can drive,” she insisted. “Just not a stick.”
“Okay.” Tim put his hand on her neck and gave it a squeeze. There was so much strength in his fingers that she wasn’t sure if the gesture was affectionate or threatening in nature. “It’s no big deal,” he said. “She’s smart. I’ll teach her in ten minutes.”
Thank God, Naomi and Forrest lived in the middle of nowhere so that she and Tim had the dirt road to themselves. The car bucked and stalled as she tried to find the balance between the gas pedal and the clutch. She felt nervous laughter bubbling up inside of her, but she stifled it, knowing that Tim was in no mood to make light of the situation. He’d awakened in his own head that morning. Any warm words from the night before were forgotten. He was a man on a mission to save his sister and that was it.
“Well,” Tim said, as they parked the car in the yard after her lesson. “The good news is that there’s not much damage you can do out here in this thing. You’d better take your time getting back to Chapel Hill, though. You’re not ready for the highway.”
Inside the kitchen later that evening, CeeCee hung back, rocking Emmanuel in her arms, while the three men studied the map spread out on the kitchen table. Naomi was baking trays of granola in the oven and the smell was tantalizing.
Tim looked over his shoulder at CeeCee. “You should take a look at this, babe,” he said.
“Here, let me take him from you so you can see.” Naomi slipped the baby from CeeCee’s arms and into the ever-present sling she wore over her shoulder.
CeeCee stepped between Tim and Forrest and leaned over the table.
“We’re here right now.” Tim pointed to a spot on the map. “And the cabin is here.” He ran his finger over barely visible lines on the map until he reached a long narrow strip of blue. “That’s the Neuse River. The cabin’s right next to the river, on a road that’s not on the map,” he said, “but I’ll remember it when I see it.”
“Where do we get groceries?” CeeCee asked.
“Closest store is ten miles from here,” Forrest said. “Over here.” He pointed to a spot on the map.
When they’d figured out their route, CeeCee and Tim took the van to the grocery store. At Tim’s insistence, she wore her gloves as they perused the aisles so that any groceries she touched would not bear her prints. They bought canned tuna, soup and vegetables, a loaf of bread, toilet paper, paper towels, tissues, eggs, pasta, peanut butter, cookies, tomato sauce and two pounds of ground beef.
“All this?” CeeCee asked worriedly as Tim put the ground beef in the cart. “How long do you really think this will take?”
“I’m still hoping for a few hours,” he said. “Overnight at the most. But you should have enough food in case it’s longer.”
They drove back to Naomi and Forrest’s house, where CeeCee transferred the groceries to the old car that she could now, for what it was worth, call her own. Marty decided to ride with her, in case she had any problems with the clutch, and they would follow Tim to the cabin. They said goodbye to their hosts, who couldn’t mask their looks of relief at seeing them leave.
She stayed close behind Tim in the old car. Twice she stalled, once at a turn and once on a hill when she stepped on the brake instead of the clutch. To his credit, Marty didn’t utter a word. He was too wound up to chide her, she thought. All three of them were so focused on what lay ahead that they barely noticed what was happening around them.
Ahead of her, Tim turned onto a road that was even more rutted than the one Naomi and Forrest lived on. She felt every jarring dip of the road in her spine, and Marty put his hand on the dashboard for balance. They were in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing except acres of tall pines and the narrow ribbon of dirt on which she was driving.
Finally they came to a fork in the road. Ahead of her, Tim stopped his van and although she couldn’t see him, she imagined he was looking in one direction, then the other.
“I think we go right,” Marty said. He had started to open the car door when Tim apparently came to the same conclusion, driving onto the right tine of the fork. CeeCee followed him, her hands gripping the steering wheel as potholes threatened to wrench it from her grasp.
“Man,” Marty said, looking from left to right and back again. “Not sure how we’re going to find this place. It’s so overgrown out here.”
Just then, Tim turned right onto a gravel road. She followed him and, after about a hundred yards, spotted the corner of a building.
“All right!” Marty gave the dashboard a celebratory slap with his palm. “Eureka!”
The minuscule cabin was sided with bleached-looking cedar. It had white shutters, a cutout of a pine tree on the bottom of each one, and a steeply sloping roof. It appeared to be in good shape. Better than Naomi and Forrest’s house, at any rate. She parked behind the van, and as soon as she opened the car door, she heard the roar of rushing water.
“Come see the river!” Tim shouted to them over the din.
They climbed over rocks and tree roots to the rear of the cabin, where the yard fell away to the bank of the river. The water swirled over a cluster of smooth boulders, striking them with such force that thousands of small puffs of foam shot into the air. She could feel the spray on her cheeks.
“Isn’t this a cool place?” Tim came to stand beside her.
“It’s nice,” she agreed. She wished she were looking forward to a romantic week in the cabin with Tim instead of a few hours with a woman she didn’t know. Being here made it all so real. She held her jacket closed against the chill air and stepped away from the river. What was she doing? What had she gotten herself into?
“Do you have your gloves?” Tim asked.
She pulled them out of her pocket.
“Put them on now,” he said. “And don’t take them off until you’re miles away from here, okay?”
She helped the men carry the groceries and her small suitcase into the cabin. It was cold inside and Tim turned the knob on the thermostat. The electric baseboard heat clicked on, and the smell of burning dust quickly filled the air.
The cabin was a small square box, divided into three main rooms—a living room and two bedrooms—as well as a tiny kitchen and tinier bathroom. She and Tim put away the groceries in silence. The empty pantry had mouse droppings on every shelf. She turned on the faucet, which did nothing, and Tim searched for the shutoff, finally locating it in a cupboard. The water poured from the tap in a rusty-brown stream.
“It’ll clear,” Tim said. “Just let it run a while.”
She dampened the paper towel with the brown water and wiped away the mouse droppings, then lined the open trash can in the corner with one of the grocery bags.
“Let’s check out the place,” Tim said, taking her gloved hand.
One bedroom had a double bed with an iron headboard. The other had two sets of bunk beds.
“This is the room Marty and Andie and I would stay in when we visited our cousins,” Tim said, a look of nostalgia
