eight

Just as Gordon was shaking his head and turning indoors, Rebecca was clambering, bloodied and more than a little frustrated into Ginny’s black Chevy Malibu (1980).

“’Becca’ baby!” Ginny exclaimed from the driver’s seat. “What happened?” she frowned to see Rebecca’s torn knees and skinned palms.

Rebecca thumped into the passenger seat and pulled the door closed with a slam. She glanced at Ginny, almost sheepishly, and burst out laughing. “I fell down,” she said, handing Ginny the plastic bag with the journals inside.

Ginny took the bag, glanced inside. “You OK?” she asked. Leaning across the Malibu’s middle console, she took Rebecca’s injured hands in her own, kissed them. “You wanna’ go back to the house – clean up, change clothes?”

Rebecca shook her head, glanced at the clock in the dash. “Nah,” she said, “I don’t wanna' be late. I’ll change when we get down there.” She returned the kisses to Ginny’s slender but strong hands. “Besides,” she shrugged, “Ellie’s seen me in a lot worse condition than this.”

Ginny smiled and eased the car into motion. “Tell me again about the time she found you in the bathroom with the neighbor boy.”

Rebecca frowned. “Just drive.” she said.

And Ginny did, bursting with a spray of gravel from the Chevy’s back tires into a drive that would take them several hours and a few hundred miles down the coast to attend the wedding of Rebecca’s older cousin, Eleanor, in San Pia, between the mountains and the sea near the southern end of the state.

***

Richard Cody, 2005