Chapter 20: Two Small Boots

The bus stopped at the corner across from the diner at six, as it did every evening.

It was a gray one with a dented fender and a driver eating a sandwich behind the wheel.

Delaney sat on the diner step with her duffel between her feet.

I sat beside her.

Birdie stood in the doorway with a paper bag of sandwiches she kept trying to hand over, and Delaney kept saying she had enough.

"It's eight hours to Taos," Birdie said. "You'll eat them at hour three."

"I will."

"My cousin's got a room with a window and a porch. She raised four kids, and she'll talk your ear off. Don't let her talk you into a name."

Delaney laughed, a little wetly.

"I already have one picked."

"Do you?"

"I'm not telling anybody until it's born."

She took the bag at last and held it on her knees.

She looked out at the gravel lot and the garage across it and the road that went north to Mill Spur.

"I thought I'd feel something leaving," she said. "I thought I'd feel guilty. I don't."

"You shouldn't."

"It's the first time anyone has asked me where I want to be."

"Where do you want to be?"

"Anywhere he isn't," Delaney said. "Anywhere the first person who looks at my baby doesn't see a lie."

She put her hand on her stomach.

"I looked at that baby on the screen in June," she said. "I wanted to hate it. I'd been bracing for hating it for weeks."

"I couldn't. It had a nose. It was just a nose and a tiny curled hand."

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