The Biker Who Walked Her Home

“I mean your Lily comes down this side at ten after three, same as always. And he comes down the far side, half a block behind, with his hands in his pockets. Doesn’t look at her. Doesn’t say boo. She goes up your steps and he goes up his.” Brenda paused. “It’s about the saddest little parade I ever saw.”

Shane saw it too. He saw it from his chair.

“Now he’s following her,” he said at supper. “You understand that’s worse? That’s worse, Amy.”

“He’s across the street. He’s doing what you told him.”

“He’s doing what he wants and staying one inch inside the line. I know the type.”

The next morning he called the elementary school from the break room at the plant. He told me about it that evening while he buttered a roll.

“School knows now. They’ve got his description. The office said they’d pass it to her teacher. He sets one boot on school property and they call me.”

Lily was pushing peas around her plate with the back of her fork. She had not said six words at the table in a week.

“Eat your supper, Lily-bug,” Shane said.

She ate every bite of it, and then she asked if there was any more.

That was the other thing. The cereal had started again. Two bowls at the counter, standing up. I noticed it. I did. I got the milk out for her and I noticed nothing at all.

It was a Thursday when the phone rang. October the twenty-second. I can tell you the time because I was looking at the clock on my monitor, trying to fit a man with a cracked crown into a Friday that had no room in it.

3:22.

“Dr. Ellis’s office, this is Amy.”

“Amy, it’s Jean Novak. At the school.”

Mrs. Novak has taught second grade in Hadley Creek for thirty-some years. She taught half the people I went to high school with. In all that time I don’t believe anybody ever heard her voice shake, and it was shaking.

“You need to come down here right now,” she said. “It’s about the man who picks her up.”

Everything in me went to water.

“Is Lily hurt?”

“Lily is right here with me. She’s not hurt. I’ve got my hand on her shoulder this minute.”

“Then what did he do?”

“Amy, I can’t do this over the telephone. Please. Just come.”

I don’t remember getting my purse. I remember one of the hygienists calling my name across the parking lot, and I remember the two-lane out of Joplin, the long flat stretch past the feed store and the church camp sign, with the speedometer sitting on a number I had never driven in my life.

I called Shane with one hand. He picked up on the first ring.

“The school called. It’s about Gus. They wouldn’t tell me what.”

There was a breath of silence on the line. When he spoke, his voice was as calm as I had ever heard it.

“I told you,” he said. “I told every one of you. I’m leaving now.”

I dropped the phone on the seat and I prayed out loud the rest of the way. It wasn’t anything fancy. It was the same six words over and over. Lord, let her be all right. I made Him promises on that road. I told Him I would never again leave it to somebody else to watch her. I told Him I’d do anything.

Eleven miles. I drove it in fourteen minutes.