24 Hours

He and Karen were twenty-five miles south of Jackson, and his mood seemed to improve with every mile. She could see anticipation in the way he leaned into the wheel as he drove. She looked through her window. A long field of cotton was giving way to a field of house trailers. PREFABRICATED HOUSING! blared the banner hanging over the lot’s entrance. GET A DOUBLE-WIDE DELUXE TODAY!

“You remember what you asked me this morning?” Hickey asked.

“What?”

“Would I kill you instead of your kid?”

Karen nodded cautiously. Hickey was fond of games. Like a cruel child teasing a wounded animal, he liked to probe her with a sharp stick and watch her squirm.

“You still want it that way? If somebody has to die, I mean?”

“Yes.”

He nodded thoughtfully, as though considering a philosophical argument. “And you think that would do the trick? Your dying would hurt your husband enough to pay him back for killing my mother?”

“Will didn’t kill your mother.” But someone should have, she thought. Before she birthed you, you son of a bitch.

“See, I don’t think it would,” Hickey said. “Hurt him that much, I mean. And the reason is interesting. See, you’re not his blood.”

She refused to look at him.

“If you died, he might miss you for a while. But the fact is, you’re just his wife. He can get another one. Damn easy, with all the money he’s got. A lot newer model, too. Hell, he might be tired of you already.”

Karen said nothing.

“But your little girl, now, that’s different. That’s blood of his blood. That’s him, the same way Mama and me were joined. And nearly six, that’s old enough for him to really know her. He loves that kid. Light of his life.”

At last she turned to him. “What are you telling me? Are you saying you’re going to kill Abby?”

He smiled. “I’m just explaining a concept to you. Hypothetically. Showing you what’s wrong with your idea from this morning.”

“This morning you told me I didn’t need to worry about that. You said nobody was going to die.” And somebody already has, she reminded herself, thinking of Stephanie.

Hickey tapped the wheel like a man content. “Like I said. Hypothetically.”

As soon as Will completed his turn and settled the Baron back over the oncoming traffic, he saw the small white car Cheryl had seen. Box-shaped and splotched with primer, it was piddling along compared to the other traffic, constantly being passed on the left. Cheryl was right: it was a Rambler. Will reduced power, slowing the plane until it was practically drifting up the interstate toward the car.

Then he saw it.

A small head in the passenger compartment of the Rambler, sitting close to a huge figure behind the wheel. A figure so large that it seemed to dwarf the car itself. The child was moving in the front seat, and as the Baron closed on the Rambler, Will made out the form and face he would have known by the dimmest candlelight. A relief unlike anything he had ever known rolled through him. Abby was alive. She was alive, and nothing on God’s earth would keep him from her now.

“Hello, Alpha-Juliet,” he said softly. He waggled his wings once, then again.

“What are you doing?” Cheryl wailed as the plane rocked left and right like a roller coaster. “I’m going to puke!”

“Waggling my wings,” he said with a smile.

Huey and Abby were singing “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider” when the airplane first appeared. It was flying straight toward them at treetop level, just to the right of the interstate.

“Look!” Huey cried. “A crop duster!”

“He’s not supposed to fly that low,” Abby said in a concerned voice. “I know, because my daddy flies an airplane.”

The plane shot past them. Abby whipped her head around and watched it climb, then vanish beyond her line of sight.

“I rode a airplane once,” Huey said. “When Joey took me to Disneyland.”

“You mean Disney World.”

“No, they got two. The old one’s in California. That’s the one we went to. Joey says they’re both the same, but I think the one in Florida’s bigger.”

“I think so, too.” Abby patted Belle in her lap. “I met the real Belle there. And the real Snow White.”

“The real ones?”

“Uh-huh. And I got dresses just like they had.”

Huey’s smile disappeared. He reached into the side pocket of his coveralls, fished around, then brought out his empty hand.

“If I made you something,” he said softly, “would you like it?”

“Sure I would.”

“It probably wouldn’t be near as nice as all the things you got at home.”

“Sure it would. Presents you make are always better than ones you buy.”

He seemed to weigh her sincerity about this. Then he reached back into the pocket and brought out what he had spent the previous night carving.

Abby opened her mouth in wonder. “Where did you get that?”

“I made it for you.”

“You made that?”