Chapter 158

Sloane

The truck was older than I was.

It had been red once. Now it was the color of rust and mud, with one door that didn’t match and a crack across the windscreen that someone had stopped with clear tape. The heater worked in two settings, off and furnace. Teague drove it one-handed, with the bad hand resting in his lap and the wheel held steady in the good one, and he took the switchbacks down from the cabin slowly, in a low gear, with the chains on the back tires clanking against the wheel arches on every bend.

I sat in the middle of the bench seat between the two of them, with Teague’s mittens on my hands and my knees jammed up against the dashboard.

Nobody talked for the first hour.

The road came down out of the trees and along a ledge above a river, iced over, black in the middle where the current ran fast. Then down again, through a long stand of pines so close together it was almost dark under them. Then out, all at once, into the sun, w