Finally we skid into the motel parking lot and I leave the heat on and the blinkers and debate whether or not to get Honey out of the car and say a prayer and risk it since I’m just running in the front door, which I do, leaving her in a car for the only time in her life and contravening every horror article I’ve ever read and I feel sick as I tell the attendant who is white and scrawny and freckled and named Ivan what’s going on over on the interstate and I crane my neck to check the car is still there outside the door and he raises an eyebrow and as he starts to lift the phone from its cradle I put a hand on his arm and say “And the older lady I was with—she’s in Camp Cooville right now, I’m supposed to get her at one-thirty and I’m gonna try the other road but I’m already going to be half an hour late and she’s ninety-two and out there with no shelter” and he says “Uh, do you want me to tell the police that too” and I hesitate and first I say no then I do the math and think if I get there at 2:00 and I can’t find her or she’s hurt it’s another forty-five minutes before I’m back here so I say “Yes, please tell them, she’s ninety-two, we might need an ambulance, I’m going to go now.”
I am a little worried about how he is planning to present all this information to the cops and wonder idly what will happen to Cindy but I write down Camp Cooville and my name and my phone number even though my phone is useless and then I run outside jump back in the car where Honey is screaming bloody murder and I kneel by her in the back seat and wipe her face and give her kisses and find her sippy cup which has a few fingers of warm milk in it and give that to her and say “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry Mama’s so so so sorry.”
We go back the original way, the way I’m hoping will not be blocked by Cindy if as I imagine they have had to spread their sparse-ass movement across hundreds of state and county roads across hundreds of miles of territory. The rain has barely let up and I am driving slowly slowly and I creep around every corner in case of blockades and mercifully there are none which just makes me feel more furious that I lost all this time to have a fucking procedural argument with Cindy when it was a moot fucking point anyway since I could go five miles over and achieve my desired outcome and I almost want to turn around and tell her what a fucking moron she is but then I remember and I start a running prayer Please let Alice be okay Please let Alice be okay. Honey is doing a low moan in the back seat and I think about how long she has been in the car and how generally unenriched unstimulated and then I think Well she won’t remember any of this anyway, but that makes me oddly sad too.
When we pull onto the dirt road to Camp Cooville it’s 2:07 which isn’t that bad but I’m terrified of getting the Buick down that road which must be a mud river in this downpour but I tell myself it’s American-built, thousands of pounds, made for hard North State winters and we inch slowly down the road and when the road finally levels I race forward to Alice’s stump and she’s not there, just the cooler bag and the blanket and the sweatshirt slumped in a pool of water on the surface of the stump. I see the umbrella leaning neatly against the stump and I wonder what this can mean. I put my head on the steering wheel and yelp and then I get out of the car pulling my jacket over my head and peering through the rain for some sign and I can’t leave Honey in the car but I can’t take her out in this so I get back in and start driving bumpily slowly around the buildings praying not to hurdle us into a sinkhole or a stump. My eyes strain so hard to make out the navy skirt the white turtleneck and the gunmetal hair that I keep seeing apparitions through the trees, but none of them are her.
