Voracious - Alice Henderson [97]
Carly nodded. “Yep! Meg here scored a job as a cook in a backcountry chalet here in Glacier. I’m going with her to hopefully talk them into hiring me on in housekeeping.”
“Sounds like a great life,” Madeline said. She thought of her last few dark days and tried to envision a cheery future for herself full of travel. Failing that, she just tried to envision a future. But she couldn’t see past the horror and terror of the last few days, couldn’t imagine what lay in store for her in the next few hours, let alone the next few years.
“You okay?” Meg asked, watching her in the rearview mirror.
“Yeah,” she lied. “Just really tired.”
By now they’d made it to the far end of the gas station’s parking lot, moving steadily in the flow of cars. Meg pulled up at the garage. “Front door service,” she said, grinning.
“Thank you!” Madeline opened the door, careful to keep more gear from spilling out. “Take care,” she said, stooping to look through the window. “And good luck on your adventures!”
“Peace!” Carly said.
“Get some rest,” Meg added.
“Will do.” Madeline managed a smile, and the women pulled away, leaving her standing in front of the repair garage.
An hour later Madeline sat in an uncomfortable red vinyl seat in the repair garage waiting room, perusing a two-year-old issue of National Geographic. They’d towed her car back to the garage, and an elderly mechanic with a shock of white hair had been checking it over for the last ten minutes.
He entered through the employee door of the waiting room and walked up behind the counter, thumbing through pages on an ancient wooden clipboard. “Miss Keye?” he asked, looking questioningly around the waiting room, even though she was the only one there. She put down the magazine and walked to the counter. She fished around in the back pocket of Noah’s jeans for her wallet and realized she’d left it back at the cabin in her rush to leave.
“Yes?”
“Well, I’ve looked over your Rabbit,” he said softly. The sympathetic look in his eye did not do much for her confidence. “I’m afraid it’s bad. Now, I can weld some of the damage and get new fuel lines and a tank and filter, but the problem is that it’s an import, and I don’t have many VW parts here. The ones I do have are for the buses. Darn popular with campers, those buses. They got the pop-up top and those sinks and stoves and whatnot. Darn handy. But I don’t have any Rabbit parts. I’ll have to order them.”
She raised her eyebrows. Somehow she knew ordering them was going to take a long time. She asked the question.
“Two weeks,” he said. “Maybe a week and a half. Depends on if they’re making another shipment up this way. Otherwise I just get parts every two weeks.”
“Darn,” she said, using the old man’s word of choice. “That long? Are you sure?”
“I’m afraid so.” His soft blue eyes gazed on her kindly. “What do you want to do?”
She thought a moment, fingers drumming on the black and greasy Formica counter. What could she do? Towing it even as far as Missoula would cost her a mint. Leaving it here until he could fix it was the best bet. But she couldn’t very well stay here, with no friends and no escape car. No. She would leave the Rabbit here, get home somehow, and come back for it. She hated the thought of leaving her beloved car, the sense of familiarity it brought her, but it was the best choice.
“Can I leave it here until you fix it?”
“Sure can,” he answered. “Got a lot out back.”
She nodded. “Then that’s what I’d like to do. I’ve got to get back home, though. I’ll leave you my information so you can contact me when you finish or call me if you have questions.”
“Good enough,” he said, and produced a tablet from under the counter. In block letters he painstakingly wrote down what was wrong with the Rabbit and then handed the pen over to her to fill in her information, the car’s year, make, and model and sign at the X to authorize repairs.
“Thank you,” she said.
“It’s what I do.” He grinned, his blue eyes sparkling beneath the crop of short, white hair. She smiled back and hoped desperately