South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [92]
Madeline nodded, her mouth tight. “Where’s Greyson?”
“He’s in Halfway, he spent the night, we’ve gotta stop and pick him Up.”
“I see.”
Randi rolled down her window and held her braids Up on the top of her head with one hand, her elbow resting on the seat back, her eyes closed, the pink-nailed toes tapping on the dash. “Can we turn on the radio?” she asked after a while.
“No.” Madeline was not in the mood to be more than just barely civil. But eventually she said, “It doesn’t work, it quit last week, I don’t know why.”
“Bummer.”
“Yeah.”
“Paul could maybe fix it for you, he’s pretty handy,” Randi said.
“Is that so.”
They rode on through miles of swamp and fir, tamarack and poplar and birch. An osprey flew out of a dead tree. Madeline soon heard a faint snore, which annoyed her even more. “Wake Up,” she said, giving Randi a jab when they neared Halfway.
Randi dropped her braids and opened her eyes. “Wow, I dozed off, sorry. I stayed Up way too late.” She stretched her arms, flexing her shoulders and twisting her wrists. She was like a cat, lithe and easy in her skin. Graceful. In fact she was beautiful. She had youth and animal magnetism and a weird kind of charm that Madeline wasn’t completely able to resist, which made her feel grouchier than ever. “Grey’s at the Trackside, it’s Up on the right—” Randi began.
“I know where it is.”
Randi gave Madeline a friendly, quizzical smile. “Right. Sorry.”
Madeline’s silence was overpowering in the confines of the car.
“I’m always cranky when it’s hot,” Randi offered. “I think it gets to everybody.”
Madeline clenched her teeth to stop from saying that it wasn’t hot at all compared to what she knew from Chicago, and she wasn’t cranky, either.
At the Trackside, Randi slid back over the seat and trotted toward the door. Madeline followed. She was in time to see Randi swing behind the bar and disappear into the back, giving a big smile and a wave to Greyson on her way past. A man and woman sat at the counter, hunched over their glasses with the focus of career drinkers. They turned when the door slammed shut, and after giving Madeline a long, flat gaze, turned away again and sat in silence except for the clunk of glass against wood each time they set their drinks down.
Greyson sat on the grimy floor, playing with a baby, a toddler wearing nothing but a diaper. The baby held a pink flyswatter in her hand and was batting at the air.
Greyson scrambled Up. “Hi, Madeline. Did you bring my mom to get me?”
Madeline nodded grimly, then remembered to smile and say, “Yes.”
“This’s Andrea,” he said, pointing at the baby, who was chewing now in a contented way on the handle of the flyswatter. “She’s two. She’s a baby.”
“Yes, so she is.”
“I stayed here last night and taked care of her.”
“Did you,” she said, thinking, You probably did.
“She hardly cried at all and she ate all her vegetables I gave her.”
“That’s great.”
Randi reappeared. “Hey, guys!” she said to the couple at the bar.
“’Lo, Randi,” the man said. The woman offered a harsh smile, ground the stub of her cigarette out in an ashtray, said nothing.
Randi swooped down to scoop Up Greyson, giving him a loud smacking kiss on his neck. He giggled and wrapped fistfuls of her braids in his fingers.
“Ready, Peanut?”
“Ready!”
“Did you have fun?”
“Mmm-hmm, I got to feed Andrea. And Annie washed Up that flyswatter, Andrea couldn’t keep her hands off it, it was funny.”
“Really?” Randi headed for the door, bouncing Greyson to make him giggle.
“What about that baby?” Madeline asked as the door clacked shut behind them.
“Oh, Roscoe’s in the back. She’s fine.”
A wave of despair rolled through Madeline. Randi might be right. The baby might be fine, Roscoe and Annie might be fine, even the two at the bar might be fine, might be drinking water and not vodka, might actually be watching that baby to some degree, they might be her grandparents and in there for that exact purpose for all Madeline knew. She was aware that she was making judgments she didn’t have the right to. Even