Chapter 24: Halloween, a Year On

On Halloween afternoon, a year later, we drove north on I-69 with a pumpkin pie on my lap.

Eli had the heat on low and one hand on the wheel.

In the back seat my daughter sat in her car seat.

She wore an orange fleece costume with a green stem on the hat.

Hazel Joan Brewer was eleven and a half months old, and she had decided that the stem was food.

"She's going to eat it," Eli said, watching the mirror.

"Let her. It's felt."

"It's got a wire in it."

"Then take it off her."

"She'll cry."

"Then she eats the stem."

He laughed, and I put my hand on the back of his neck.

We drove through flat gold fields with the corn cut down to stubble.

It was a clear afternoon, with no sleet anywhere.

The sign came up on the right: SERVICE PLAZA, 1 MILE.

I had told myself for a year that I would feel something when I saw it.

My heart did pick up a little, and my hands tightened on the pie dish.

Eli looked at me.

"We can drive past," he said.

"No. I asked for this."

"You asked for it in January."

"I still want it."

He signaled and took the exit ramp.

The plaza was smaller than I remembered.

It had a long low building of brown brick and a gas station with six pumps.

The lot held maybe thirty cars.

A woman was walking a dog on the grass strip by the trash cans.

A trucker was eating a sandwich in his cab with the window down.

It was the most ordinary place in the world.

Eli pulled into a space near the front doors and put the truck in park.

He turned off the engine.

For a moment nobody said anything, and Hazel gnawed on her stem in the back and made a wet, happy noise.

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