American Heart

by Laura Moriarty

  He cleared his throat. “I’m going to listen to an audiobook for a while.” He was already fiddling with the stereo.

  “That sounds good,” I said, meaning it. “Whatcha got?”

  “Uh, I forget the title. It’s a guide to smart investing.”

  I’ll admit that from the get-go, I wasn’t super excited about the subject matter. But the book was even worse than I thought, with no storytelling at all, just a guy reading in a flat voice about shares and Wall Street indicators and commodities, and using the phrase “increase wealth rapidly” like twenty-five times. It would’ve put me to sleep in just a few minutes if I’d kept listening, and as it didn’t seem likely Tyler would take offense, I slipped my earbuds back in, looking back over my right shoulder at Chloe. She was awake, staring out the back window. Maybe she was listening and picking up investment tips, but it looked like she was just thinking, and the expression on her face seemed so sad, or maybe just tired. I was thinking she’d be excited, now that we were getting so close to the border. But she might have been thinking these fields and farms were the last she’d ever see of the United States.

  It was weird to think I myself would actually be in another country soon, at least for a few hours. As soon as Chloe was safe and gone, I could call Tess. She’d been back from Puerto Rico for a whole day now, and I knew if I called her, she’d drive up to get me. I could tell her the truth, once it was safe to. But she would be the only person I’d tell about Chloe, ever, except for Caleb. I’d tell everybody else I’d run away, then after a few days, changed my mind. I’d be in trouble with Aunt Jenny, and maybe the law. But at least I’d get to see Caleb, and let him know Chloe was fine. He was probably so worried about both of us. I’d left on Wednesday, and it was Saturday now. All these days in between, he’d had to lie to Aunt Jenny, and anyone who asked, and say I’d left him, just like our mom had left him, at the McDonald’s. He had to listen to whatever bad things people had to say about me while he was probably getting more worried about me every day.

  Tess might be worried too, after listening to that crazy voice mail. She might have gone to the Dairy Queen to try to catch me working, and heard I’d missed two shifts while she was gone. But there wouldn’t be anything she could do about it. I’d told her not to tell.

  I was still thinking all this out, looking out the window and braiding my hair in little strands by my ear, when I felt the truck start to slow. For a second, I thought we were running out of gas. That happened on the highway with my mom once, and I remembered how the car had slowed, then stopped, and how we’d all looked at each other so surprised like, You’re kidding. A car really needs gas to work? But Tyler seemed calm as he eased the truck in front of a plowed drive, iced-over snow crunching under the tires.

  I sat up, looking around. There was no reason to stop here. There was nothing. Maybe he needed to pee. That was possible. Still, by the time he put the gear in park, my hand was in my coat pocket, and I’d flicked the safety off the pepper spray.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, trying not to sound scared.

  The engine was still running, and the windshield wipers whacked back and forth, pushing away falling snow.

  “The road’s getting really bad.” He moved his palm along the edge of his cheek. “And I know from experience they don’t plow as often, the farther north you go. We’ll be better off stopping for the night if we can.”

  I didn’t believe him. It wasn’t snowing any harder than it had been when we’d stopped in Fargo, or even when we’d first set out from the hotel in Lakeville that morning. But whatever I believed or didn’t believe, there wasn’t anything I could do. We were way out in the country. The only building I could see, way off in the distance, was somebody’s green-roofed house, and I didn’t know how long it had been since we’d passed a gas station. I wanted to turn around and look at Chloe, and see what she was thinking. But I didn’t want to take my eyes off him. The wipers kept their steady beat.

  “We’ve got to get to Winnipeg tonight,” I said.

  He laughed a little, not in a mean way. Just like I didn’t understand.

  “Well”—his eyebrows moved up, then down—“I was in a hurry myself. And then I took this back road, because of your . . . lack of documents. And I’m sorry, but the snow’s really piling up. I don’t want to be out in the middle of nowhere when it gets dark.”

  I nodded. Maybe he was telling the truth. If he just wanted to go to a hotel, we could do that. I steadied my breath before I spoke.

  “Where are you thinking of going?”

  He got out his phone. “Well, I pulled over here because my buddy has a hunting lodge just a mile or so up this drive. It’s closed for the season, but he stays through. I’m sure he’ll give us a couple of rooms if he’s around. And then we can start out in the morning.” He held up one finger. “Hold on. I’ll call and make sure he’s there.”

  He was acting like he was being reasonable, like he was just making the best out of a bad situation. But all at once my coat felt tight and hot. Even if I didn’t have Chloe with me, even if I was just with Caleb or anybody not wanted by the law, I would never agree to spend the night in some winter-closed hunting lodge in Who Knows Where, Minnesota. This was a start of a horror movie if I’d ever heard one.

  “Hey, Dale. It’s Tyler. Yup. Hey, listen. Are you around now? In the lodge?” He lifted his chin, his gaze moving around the windshield. Maybe he was really talking to someone. I considered that I could try to grab the phone from him and see for myself, but that didn’t seem smart. If he was lying, that would just set things off in a direction I wasn’t ready for them to go in. Really, there was nothing for me to do but sit there and watch him with my finger on the pepper-spray trigger.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move along the floor of the truck, a strip of bright blue. The ice scraper. Chloe was sliding it toward her. I held my breath. At least there were two of us. We’d do okay, maybe, with pepper spray and an ice scraper. Unless he had a knife. Or a gun.

  “Aw, that’d be great,” Tyler said. “Yeah. I’m actually right at the start of River Road. Yeah. But here’s the deal. I’ve got a couple of hitchhikers with me, a girl and her aunt. What? Yeah, I know. But they’re fine. Nice people. Quiet. Anyway, they’ll need a room too. I’m sure they can pay the rate. Will that work?”

  I told myself it was possible he wasn’t lying. It was possible that we’d really go to some closed-down lodge, get our own room with a lock, and start out for Winnipeg in the morning. And if that was really his plan and we flipped out now, if I pepper-sprayed him or Chloe tried to club him with his own ice scraper, we’d definitely regret it, not just for his sake, but for ours.

  He put his phone away and looked at me. “Okay. He said he’ll get two rooms ready for us.” He smiled like I’d won a prize, like this was something I’d told him I wanted. “He’s a good guy. We go way back, so he’s not even going to charge us. And he’s getting out clean sheets and everything.”

  He put the truck in gear and checked the rearview, like there were any other cars to worry about.

  “Hey,” I said. “Wait a minute.” I tried to make my voice go deep, like I was serious and someone to listen to, but I was so scared I just sounded strange. “I appreciate you asking your friend for us, and all the trouble you’ve already gone to. But we’d rather stay in a regular hotel. I’m sure you understand.” I tried my best to smile. “Is there a gas station or something around here? Somewhere you could drop us?”

  He did the laughing thing again. “Uh . . . not unless you want to try your luck at somebody’s farm. You could go around knocking on doors.” He kept both hands on the wheel. “Listen. I told you I was taking a back road. The closest hotel would be in Thief River Falls, and that’s some twenty-five miles back. I’m sorry, but I just don’t feel comfortable doing that in this weather.”

  I tried to think. There had to be a way out. “What about dinner?”

  He shrugged. “Dale’ll probabl
y offer us something. The last time I was there, his wife made spaghetti, and it was amazing. But she wasn’t planning on us, so I don’t know. They’re hospitable people, though.”

  I gave him a long look. He hadn’t said anything about a wife when he was on the phone.

  “Oh.” He blinked, his lips parted. “Are you . . . scared? Are you thinking I’m going to do something to you?”

  I didn’t say anything. My hand was still in my pocket. It was hard to imagine Chloe hitting anybody with an ice scraper, much less stabbing them with it. But she would. If he made a grab for me, I knew she would.

  “Look,” he said. “I’m just trying to make sure we get to Canada alive. It’s not like that. Dale’s got a wife, Ellie, and she’s really nice. And anyway, you’re gonna have your own room. Like a regular hotel room. Maybe not as nice.” He laughed again, but it was a frustrated laugh, like he was trying to communicate with a crazy person. “A free room. And then a ride to Canada. It’s a pretty good deal.”

  There wasn’t really a decision to make. If he’d planned to get us way out here, where we couldn’t say no, he’d already done it. And maybe it would all be okay.

  It seemed like Chloe agreed, as she hadn’t tried to club him yet. I waited a few seconds, just to see, but she stayed quiet.

  “Thanks,” I said. “That’d be great.”

  The road he turned onto was plowed, though only enough for one lane. It snaked its way around clusters of trees, the narrow trunks grown close together, the bare branches cradling snow. I stretched my neck to peer around every turn, but all I saw was more trees, and snow falling on snow. It would have been peaceful to look at, maybe, if I knew there really was a hunting lodge up ahead. But I could only take in short, quick breaths, because it was starting to seem a lot more likely that Tyler, if that was even his name, was going to stop at a clearing and kill us. He would bury us here. He’d have a shovel in the back of the truck. And wouldn’t that be a way for me to go, after all my years of watching movies and thinking I was smarter than the people who got killed in them, and that it could never happen to me.

  But then we came around another turn, and there it was—a long log cabin–looking building, one story, with eight windows and eight numbered doors, all evenly spaced and facing a plowed parking lot. The office was off on one side, its pitched roof rising a little taller than the rooms, like the head of a dark caterpillar. A sign just to the right of the glass door read Welcome to the River Road Lodge! The walkway to the office was shoveled except for what might have fallen in the last hour, but the rest of the building, including the doors to the rooms, were half-covered with snow. Tyler parked next to a smaller truck with a plow attached to the front.

  “Well.” He didn’t look at me. “It’s not a Hilton. But it’ll have to do.”

  He got out of the truck. I looked over my shoulder at Chloe, who held my gaze and shook her head just once. I didn’t know what that meant, exactly—what it was she was saying no to. But I agreed we shouldn’t move just yet.

  “You getting out?” Tyler asked. He’d left his door open, and snowflakes drifted onto his seat. I didn’t say anything. I wanted to see the wife. I wanted her to come out here and ask us if we liked spaghetti.

  He ducked, looking through the back window at Chloe. He shook his head and did the laughing thing again, like we were both just acting so strange. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  I checked the ignition. He’d taken his keys. I turned around.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I said.

  She shook her head, her gloved hand over her mouth. I turned back to my window again, watching him make his way up the shoveled walk to the office door. He still just had on his Wisconsin sweatshirt, with no coat over it, and snowflakes settled on his shoulders and the back of his hair. He tried opening the glass door. When it didn’t open, he knocked on the glass and cupped his hands around his eyes.

  “You got the ice scraper?” I turned around again.

  She nodded, glancing down. She had it tucked between her boots.

  “But he might not plan to harm us,” she said. “He might just want to stop for the night. Look.” She nodded toward the cabin, where a bearded man in a flannel shirt had opened the office door. Tyler turned around and pointed at us, looking like he was explaining something. The man nodded. Tyler smiled at us, and gave us a thumbs-up, then followed the bearded man inside.

  I turned around again, nodding down at the plastic grocery bag. “What’s in there?”

  “Crackers. Beef Jerky.”

  “What about the duffel bag?”

  She hesitated. “You want me to look through his things?”

  “Yeah.” I turned back to the office door. “I’ll keep watch. I just want to know what’s in there.” I didn’t know what I thought she’d find. Drugs. A gun. Heavy rope. If he’d wanted to hurt us, he’d already had plenty of opportunity. I still wanted to know what was in the bag.

  “There is only clothes,” she said. “And a toothbrush. Toothpaste.” She zipped the bag closed, smoothing the top like she wanted to undo what she’d done. “But we can’t go in. We can’t.”

  I tried to think. We couldn’t lock him out. He had the clicker. We could get out and run, but to where?

  “I am so sorry,” she said, and I could hear she was trying not to cry. “I am so sorry that you are here. This is my fault. All of this has been my fault.”

  “You told me to leave,” I said. “You told me twice.” I was thinking I was the one who should feel bad. I could have told her back in Fargo that I thought Tyler might have something illegal in his truck. I’d told myself that it was just a theory, and that I didn’t want to scare her. But it was a pretty good theory. And she might have been right to be scared.

  She touched my shoulder. “Here he is.”

  Tyler moved carefully over the walk, a pale yellow bundle in his arms. The bearded man waved from the doorway, then went back in.

  Tyler opened the door to the truck. It seemed like a good sign that he’d opened the driver’s door. He was keeping his distance.

  “Okay,” he said, ducking enough to see my face. “Here’s the deal. His wife’s in Florida right now, visiting her sister.”

  We stared at each other. He glanced back at Chloe.

  “But here are the clean sheets. And here’s the room key.” He put the folded yellow sheets on his seat. A key attached to a green plastic diamond sat in the middle. “You’re in number two. I’m in number one. He said he left the bathroom sink running a little so the pipes wouldn’t freeze, and you shouldn’t turn it off. Okay?”

  He was speaking to me slowly, like I wasn’t very smart, or like I was famous for my crazy temper. I nodded.

  “I’m not going to so much as knock on your door. But I’m going to be out here at nine a.m. tomorrow, ready to go. Dale said it’s going to stop snowing tonight, and that’ll give the plows time to get up north.”

  I nodded again. All of this sounded reasonable. I was starting to feel dumb.

  “I’m going to have mac and cheese with Dale in his place, and he said you’re both welcome to join us, but if you’re . . . uncomfortable with that, I can give you my crackers and beef jerky I bought back in Fargo. Okay? It’s in the plastic bag there in the backseat.” He held up his palms. “So all I need right now is my bag, and I’m going to go inside, and you can do what you want. But it’s probably too cold to sleep out here. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  Chloe passed his bag up through the seats. I felt bad that he was having to act like the truck was ours. And that he had to give us his beef jerky and crackers. There was a chance he was a good person, and we were treating him like he wasn’t.

  “Okay,” he said, nodding to Chloe, and then to me. “See you tomorrow.”

  He closed his door, jingling his keys with a wave. We watched him go up the walk and disappear through the door. And then it was just us, sitting in the truck, the cold already settling in.

  16


  AS SOON AS we got in the room, Chloe pulled the ice scraper out from under her coat and raised it like a baseball bat. I checked the lock, fixed the chain, and pressed my back against the door.

  She took a step forward. “You stay here.”

  I grabbed the sleeve of her coat. When she looked back, I shook my head. No way was I going to stand there by myself while she walked around a cold and musty hunting-lodge room that even in daylight looked like a prime location for a murder. The walls were covered in wood paneling, and the only decoration was a framed poster of a mallard duck taking flight from a lake. Beneath the poster was a stripped double bed with a folded green cover at the foot, and next to that was a little desk lamp sitting on a nightstand that wasn’t as tall as the bed. A couple of dressers stood against the opposite wall. One had a television on it, the old box-shaped kind, secured to the wall by what looked like a bicycle lock.

  Chloe yanked back one of the plaid curtains, letting in the silvery light of the clouded sky. We moved toward the bathroom together, my hand still tight on her sleeve. She pushed open the door and jumped in with both feet, keeping the ice scraper raised. Water dripped from the faucet of the sink. I flung back the shower curtain, ready with my pepper spray, but there was nothing in the tub but an orange stain by the drain. Still, when we came out of the bathroom, we went through the same procedure with the sliding door of the closet, only finding some wire hangers and a couple of wool blankets folded on the shelf. I got down on my hands and knees to look under the bed, but the frame was too low to the ground for anyone to be hiding under.

  “Okay.” Chloe looked up at the low ceiling. “It is okay. It is fine.”

  She went back to the door and held her hand against it while she slid off her boots. We’d already tracked snow onto the gray carpet, but I pulled off my boots too, taking giant steps on my way back to the bathroom so I wouldn’t get my socks wet.

  When I came out of the bathroom, Chloe was fiddling with the thermostat. Something in the heater under the window started to hum.