Page 97 of This is Why We Lied

The other text was only marginally better. Faith’s mother had sent a photo of Emma with her face painted like Pennywise, the clown from It. Faith would figure out later whether the homage was intentional. She sent back a bunch of hearts before dropping her phone in the cup holder.

“Fuck!” she screamed. A bird had nearly flown straight into her windshield. Faith turned the wheel and ended up bumping along the shoulder. She over-corrected. The car started to hydroplane. Everything slowed down. She knew that you turned into a skid when you were on ice, but did you do the same with mud? Did you wrench the wheel in the opposite direction or would that jackknife you into a ditch?

The answer came soon enough. The Mini morphed into Kristi Yamaguchi, twisting into a three-sixty, lifting up on two wheels, and gliding across the road until it landed in the opposite ditch.

The car gave a violent shudder as it settled into the gulley. Faith was too breathless to utter a curse, but she promised herself she would as soon as her asshole unclenched. There weren’t a lot of ways this day could get any worse.

Then she got out of the car and saw her back wheel buried in two inches of mud.

“Mother—”

Faith put her fist to her mouth. She could handle this. She’d worked as a patrol officer. Her shifts had been routinely filled with helping dumbasses extricate their vehicles from ditches. She found her emergency kit in the trunk, which had blankets, food, water, an emergency radio, a flashlight and a collapsible shovel.

“Purple Rain” had reached its crescendo. She had to think Dolly Parton would appreciate an exasperated mother of two digging herself out of the mud in the middle of nowhere while she listened to the Prince cover. Faith’s hands started to ache as she dug. She suffered through an entire Nickelback song clearing a path. For good measure, she grabbed handfuls of gravel and packed them at the base of the tire. She was splattered in mud by the time she was finished. She wiped her hands on her pants before getting back into the car.

She tapped the gas, praying for traction. The car inched forward, then rocked back. She kept at it, slowly rocking forward and back until her wheels found purchase on the gravel.

“You fucking queen,” she told herself.

“Hell yeah.”

“Fuck!” Faith jumped, banging her head on the sunroof. A woman was standing on the other side of the ditch. Her face was haggard, worn down by the hard sun and an equally hard life. A Bluetick hound was sitting beside her. She had a shotgun slung across her shoulders like a dangerous scarecrow. Her hands dangled from either end.

“Didn’t think you could do it,” the woman said. “Never met one of you city folks who could punch your way out of a wet paper bag.”

Faith bought herself a moment to contain her freak-out by turning off the radio. She wondered how long the peanut gallery had been standing there. Long enough to see the Mini’s Fulton County car tag, which identified her as a resident of Atlanta.

She told the woman, “I’m with the—”

“GBI,” she said. “You’re with that tall fella. Will, right? Married to Sara.”

Faith guessed this woman was a witch. “I didn’t catch your name.”

“I didn’t throw it.” She lifted her chin in defiance. “Who you looking for?”

“You,” Faith guessed. “Penny Danvers.”

She gave a single nod. “Smarter than you look.”

Faith ran her tongue along the back of her teeth. “Do you want a ride back to your place?”

“The dog, too?”

Faith didn’t think her car could get any filthier. She reached over and pushed open the door. “I hope he likes Cheerios. My daughter likes to throw them at my head.”

The dog waited for Penny to click her tongue before he jumped through the two front seats with his muddy paws, then promptly started hoovering the floor, which was the only good thing that had happened today. Penny got in the front. The door slammed. She braced the shotgun between her legs, the muzzle pointed at the roof. Another good thing. She could’ve pointed it at Faith.

“I’m two miles up on the left. Gets a little bumpy, so hang on,” said the woman with the loaded shotgun who wasn’t wearing her seat belt. “You’ll see the barn before you see the house.”

Faith put the gear in drive. Both windows were still down. She kept the speedometer at thirty so dust from the gravel road wouldn’t choke them inside the car. And also because the dog smelled like a dog.

“So,” Faith said. “Out hunting or—”

“Had a cayote take one of my chickens.” Penny nodded at the radio, “Did you hear her cover of ‘Stairway to Heaven’?”

Dolly Parton. The universal icebreaker. And a giant clue that Penny had been standing alongside the ditch for a hell of a lot longer than Faith had realized. She tried not to show her unease when she asked, “From Halos and Horns or from Rockstar?”

Penny chuckled. “Which one do you think?”