Kit drove until she found a public parking area with shade and room to turn. Then she put the truck where Leah could get out without stepping into traffic.
“Don't move yet,” she said.
She came around and opened the passenger door. Leah looked at the step. Getting down had become a thing she had to arrange.
“I can do it.”
Kit nodded and stayed where she was, holding the door. Leah descended slowly, keeping her right hand against her stomach. The air outside was cooler than the cab, and she shivered hard enough to make it hurt.
They sat on the low curb beside the truck. Kit set the first-aid box between them. When Leah moved the cloth, the skin had stuck to it. She swore. Kit looked away for a second, then back.
“Can you move them?”
Leah moved her fingers. Enough to show they moved. Not enough to make either of them happy.
“You need it looked at.”
“Yes.”
“Now?”
Leah looked toward the road. A car passed with a roof rack full of folded chairs. Behind it came a battered van, a little inflatable boat tied on top. They all had the whole afternoon to get somewhere.
“Soon,” she said.
Kit didn't argue. She took out what they needed to cover the scrape and put the things she didn't recognize back in the box. They did the simple work slowly, Leah telling her when something hurt, Kit stopping without pretending the stopping made the pain disappear.
When the blood was cleaned away, the hand looked worse in a different way. Swollen at the base of the thumb, purple beginning to show through. Leah flexed it once and stopped.
“That's enough testing,” Kit said.
Leah let her finish covering the scrape. Kit closed the box and put it on the step. She had Leah's blood on one finger and wiped it on the cloth, looking annoyed, as if her mother had made a mess of a shared work space. The irritation was easier to bear than kindness.
Leah looked at the patch of ground between her boots. There was a flattened bottle cap pressed deep into the dirt. Her left hand wanted to dig it out.
“Don't go back for the keys,” Kit said.
Leah looked up.
“I wasn't.”
“I mean in your head. You keep getting that look. It's done.”
Leah rested the cold bottle against the covered swelling. Kit sat beside her until she could breathe without hissing at the pain.
The truck's side compartment banged in the breeze.
“That's open,” Kit said.
Leah turned. The folded canvas cover had caught in it, keeping the latch from closing. She stood automatically, and Kit stood too.
“Tell me,” her daughter said.
Leah went as far as the compartment. The catch was bent slightly out of line. The door had been loose before she left the yard; Nell would have put a note on the desk, Denny would have complained about it, somebody would have given it ten minutes. She had driven off with a company and left all its people behind.
She pointed with her good hand. “Cover's pushing it out. Take that down first.”
Kit pulled the cover free. An empty bottle rolled out with it, followed by the lunch container Denny had been missing since June.
“Don't open that.”
Kit held it away from herself. “I can feel it having a thought.”
Leah laughed, a short breath that made her shoulders drop for the first time since the diner. Kit put the container in a trash can and spread the cover on the grass.
They folded it together. Kit took most of the reaching; Leah held one edge with her left hand and moved when told. It was slower than doing it herself. It was also getting done.
The latch still wouldn't catch.
Kit looked at the little shelf of tools. “Which?”
Leah showed her. Then she sat on the cab step while Kit crouched at the door. She gave one instruction at a time, stopping when Kit asked a question. Twice she began to stand. Twice her daughter looked over her shoulder without speaking, and Leah sat again.
The first test failed. The second held, then sprang open when Kit tapped it.
“Nice,” Kit said. “Very reassuring.”
“It's not quite lined up.”
“I gathered.”
“Try it with the door lifted a little.”
Kit did. The catch went home. She opened it, adjusted the part she'd been holding and tried again. This time it shut with the right sound.
She stepped away, wiping her hands on her jeans. Leah nearly reached to test it herself. Instead she said, “Will it stay?”
Kit tugged at it once more. “Yes.”
“Okay.”
They sat beneath the truck's little patch of shade to eat. The sandwiches from the station were warm, the bread dry, the ham too wet. Kit inspected them and gave Leah the one that looked least interested in killing her.
Leah ate with her left hand. Every few bites she set the sandwich down because her right kept trying to help and meeting pain instead of a job. Kit unwrapped the water bottle before passing it over. Neither mentioned it.
A man wheeled a cooler along the public path. Beyond him the lake showed between the parked trailers, bright and flat. Somewhere close, two people were arguing about whose turn it was to carry a chair. The argument had the familiar tiredness of a small problem lasting too long.
Kit checked her phone. A message from Walt. She read it without showing the screen, then put it facedown on her knee.
“What?” Leah asked.
“He said he should have known I was you.”
Leah looked down at the sandwich.
“Didn't answer,” Kit said.
For a while they ate. The silence was not comfortable, but it didn't require either of them to win it.
The phone lit again. Walt had sent a photograph without words. The boat at a service ramp, his pickup already coupled to its trailer. At the edge of the picture, a marina clock showed half past two.
Kit turned it toward her mother.
“He's already there.”
Leah studied the picture. The pickup's front door was shut. No bag visible on the seat. Walt knew both women opposed him now. He would not want them close to the cash.
“That's the East Basin?”
Kit nodded. “Gordon's place. I know the boat.”
Leah put the unfinished sandwich down. The bottle against her hand had warmed. She could drive if she didn't ask that hand to do anything surprising. She could not stop a heavy bag with it, or catch Kit if she fell.
Kit watched her face.
“Are you going to tell me how much you can still do?” she asked.
“No.”
“Good. Get in. We'll find out what's actually there.”
Kit took the driver's seat. Leah got in beside her, slowly, and held the cloth against the swelling. Her daughter started the truck, checked the mirrors and waited for a gap in the traffic. Leah watched the gap arrive. She kept both hands in her lap while Kit chose it.