"Honest, Mrs. Reid, I thought for a minute you was dead! There you were, facedown on the closet floor, still and cold. I didn't even know if you were breathing! Sheila liked to have died when we realized it was you."
"You shoulda seen Keith, Mama," Sheila beamed proudly. "He had CPR training in vo-tech school." I looked up at pimply, skinheaded Keith and shuddered. The thought of those chapped lips wrapped over my own and blowing stale breath into my lungs made me cringe.
"Surely I was breathing?" I asked, once again attempting to push myself up off the pillows.
"Oh, yes, ma'am," Keith said. "That's how come I knew you wasn't dead or nothing. I used to get knocked out all the time skateboarding."
That explained a lot, I thought. My head was pounding. "Sheila, why aren't you in school?" I demanded. "And what are you two doing here?"
Sheila favored me with her most adult expression. "Mama, it's a teacher workday. Keith let me use his truck while my car's in the shop. I was just coming back to take him to lunch."
"Back where?" I still couldn't pull myself together.
"Mama! Keith works here! I told you he had a regular job. He's the clean-up man." I looked at Keith, all decked out in a dirty blue jumpsuit, his name embroidered in red on the pocket. "He cleans out the trailers and helps set them up when they come in."
Keith tightened his grip on Sheila's shoulder. "Sheila's uncle gave me the job a couple of months ago," he said. "I'm working my way up."
Everyone's entitled to their fantasies, I thought. Working his way up, indeed! I really tried to sit upright this time, and finally succeeded, although my head hurt like crazy and my entire body felt detached and unresponsive.
"Mama," Sheila said, her face rigid with worry, "what happened?"
"Honey, I have no idea. One minute I was looking around, the next, I'm here with you two."
"Mrs. Reid," Keith said, "it just isn't safe to go roaming around in these trailers, not without a salesperson or something. This isn't the first time someone's gotten into one of our trailers, looking for stuff to take or a place to stay for a little while. We're right by the highway, you know."
Well, duh, I should've been more careful. Of course. But what good was that piece of advice gonna do me now? I'd come to the Mobile Home Kingdom looking to find something the police could've overlooked. Instead, someone had found me, and I didn't for a second subscribe to the theory that a vagrant had bopped me on the head.
"Mama, do you want me to take you to the doctor?" Sheila stepped forward to help me down off the bed.
"No, honey, I'm fine. Really." When I stumbled in my attempt to stand, she and Keith rushed forward, one on either side of me.
"Sheila, you'd better take your mama home and stay with her for awhile. I'll come pick you up after work." Keith was taking charge and Sheila jumped to do as he said. They led me, like an old woman, to my car. Sheila carefully lowered me into the passenger seat before she turned to kiss Keith good-bye. It was a long kiss, full of promise.
"Don't worry about a thing," he said softly to her. "Your mama'll be fine. I'll be along to carry you out to supper later." She floated over to the driver's side, slid behind the wheel, and held out her hand expectantly for my keys.
It was a first. Sheila driving my car with me as the passenger. I didn't know what scared me more, the idea of riding with her down busy Holden Road, or facing the thought that someone at the mobile home lot had seen me arrive and had wanted to hurt me.
I closed my eyes and tried not to open them as Sheila drove. I knew that if I so much as peeked out at our progress, I would begin shrieking instructions. It would end in disaster or death, and, if Sheila really was a bad driver, I didn't want to see the end coming. No, I would take the coward's way out. I would squeeze my eyes shut and pray for the best.
Fortunately, I chose to open my eyes as we were mere carlengths from home.
"Look out!" I cried, ducking down below the window. "Don't stop! Keep going!"
This, of course, scared the fool out of Sheila, who reacted by applying the brakes and skidding to a dead stop right in front of the house. By that time I was almost on the floor of the front passenger side, my head pounding unbearably, and my eyes once again tightly shut.
"Drive!" I barked.
"Mama!" Sheila squealed.
"That man knocking on the front door is a cop! Get out of here!"
"Cool!" Sheila said. "It's a getaway!" She peeled rubber and skidded down the street, popping the car into second gear as she accelerated and pushed my ancient relic into cardiac arrest.
"Sheila! What'd you do that for?" We might as well have stopped, rolled down the window and screamed, "You can't catch me!" I knew without looking behind us that Marshall Weathers was on our tail.
I straightened back up in my seat and glimpsed in the rearview mirror. There he was, as certain as nightfall, as constant as daylight.
"Honey, just pull over," I said.
"No, Mama, I can lose him! Watch this!" Before I could open my mouth to stop her, Sheila accelerated, pulled up on the hand brake, fishtailed, and cut the corner onto a little side road that I knew was a dead end.
"Sheila! Stop! Right now!"
Marshall Weathers turned on the blue lights and stepped on the accelerator. He zoomed up behind us, and I could almost make out that little angry twitch in his jaw.
"Mama, I can do this!" Sheila wailed. "I'll save you! They'll never take us alive!"
Was she out of her damn mind? "Sheila, look out!" We were about to run up on the dead end. Sheila swerved, hit the curb, bounced up on the sidewalk and came, finally, to a halt. I reached over and pulled the keys from the ignition.
As Marshall Weathers walked purposefully up to my side of the car, his jaw definitely working, I rolled down the window and said loudly, "And that concludes today's lesson on driving with a stick shift."
Weathers leaned down and looked in the window. He didn't say a word, and if I had to guess, he was working to control his temper. Finally, he spoke.
"Ladies," he said.
"Afternoon, Detective," I said. "I believe you know my daughter, Sheila. What can we do for you?"
Sheila, taking her cue from me, smiled broadly and leaned forward to bat her eyes at the cute detective. "Cool, huh?" she said. "Mama's teaching me to drive a stick."
Weathers swallowed hard. "Perhaps you ladies might do best to practice in a less populated area," he said. Then he looked at me. He hadn't forgotten last night. His eyes were hard and unforgiving. "I want to talk to you'" he said.
"Take a number," I answered.
"Now," he said, his voice dropping to an almost-whisper.
"Later," I said, "can't you see I'm in the middle of something?" My head was singing. It hurt so badly and when I looked hard at Weathers, his face suddenly split into doubles.
"When, exactly?" he said.
"Come by around seven," I answered. "Before I leave for work."
"If you try and run out on me, I'll come down to that dance hall where you work and haul you out like a common criminal."
"And if you do," I answered, pitching my voice as low as his, "my attorney will run your ass up a flagpole."
He whirled around and was gone, leaving me and Sheila slumped back against our seats, breathing hard.
"Well, how about that." She sighed. "We're finally equals."
"What in the world do you mean by that?" I asked.
"Well, like, we're both in trouble! It's not just me. We're hanging together."
"It is a sorry day, Sheila, when you think cool is being in trouble with the law."
Sheila looked hurt. "Well, I was only trying to help, Mama. I know you did what you did for a reason. I haven't stopped believing in you. I just wish you'd tell me the whole story. Did he molest you?"
I turned to look at my daughter. She had a pained and fearful look on her face. Her eyes brimmed with tears that spilled over and ran down her cheeks.