The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [27]
“If they’re still in there, honey, which I kinda doubt, they aren’t going to be opening up anytime soon.”
A man’s voice. Caroline turned and saw him standing below her, on the ramplike decline that allowed tractor trailers to back into the loading area. Even at this distance she could tell he was a large person. He wore a bulky coat and a wool knit hat. His hands were shoved into his pockets.
“My baby’s crying,” she said, unnecessarily. “My car battery is dead. There’s a phone right inside the front door, but I can’t get to it.”
“How old’s your baby?” the man asked.
“A newborn,” Caroline told him, hardly thinking, the edge of tears and panic in her voice. Ridiculous, an idea she had always loathed, and yet here she was—a damsel in distress.
“It’s Saturday night,” the man observed, his voice traveling over the snowy space between them. Beyond the parking lot, the street was still. “Any garage in town is likely to be closed.”
Caroline didn’t answer.
“Look here, ma’am,” he began slowly, the steadiness of his voice some kind of anchor. Caroline realized he was being deliberately calm, deliberately soothing; he might even think she was crazy. “I left my jumper cables with another trucker last week by mistake, so I can’t help you that way. But it’s cold out here, like you say. I’m thinking, Why don’t you come sit with me in the rig? It’s warm. I delivered a load of milk here a couple of hours ago, and I was waiting to see about the weather. I’m saying that you’re welcome, ma’am. To sit in the truck with me. Might give you some time to think this through.” When Caroline didn’t immediately respond, he added, “I’m considering that baby.”
She looked across the parking lot then, to its very edge, where a tractor trailer with a dark gleaming cab sat idling. She had seen it earlier, but she had not taken it in, the long dull silver box of it, its presence like a building at the edge of the world. In her arms Phoebe gasped, caught her breath, and resumed her crying.
“All right,” Caroline decided. “For the moment, anyway.” She stepped carefully around some broken onions. When she reached the edge of the ramp he was there, holding up a hand to help her down. She took it, annoyed but also grateful, for she felt the layer of ice beneath the rotting vegetables and snow. She looked up to see his face, thickly bearded, a cap pulled down to his eyebrows and, beneath it, dark eyes: kind eyes. Ridiculous, she told herself, as they walked together across the parking lot. Crazy. Stupid, too. He could be an ax murderer. But the truth was, she was almost too tired to care.
He helped her collect some things from the car and get settled in the cab, holding Phoebe while Caroline climbed into the high seat, then handing her up through the air. Caroline poured more formula from the thermos into the bottle. Phoebe was so worked up that it took her a few moments to realize that food had come, and even then she struggled to suck. Caroline stroked her cheek gently, and at last she clamped down on the nipple and started drinking.
“Kinda strange, isn’t it,” the man said, once she had quieted. He had climbed into the driver’s seat. The engine hummed in the darkness, comforting, like some great cat, and the world stretched away to the dark horizon. “This kind of snow in Kentucky, I mean.”
“Every few years it happens,” she said. “You’re not from here?”
“Akron, Ohio,” he said. “Originally, that is. But I’ve been on the road five years now. I like to think