I can barely hear what she says, so I step forward. Jamie calls out my name in warning, but Cara stammers, “It... it’s just me.”
I scan the road in both directions. The high grass on the opposite side of the street. The trees. Thunder rumbles in the distance and the wind picks up, blowing dust in my eyes. I blink quickly, taking a step back, trying to clear my vision.
Jamie is looking around, too. I take a moment to wipe the dust and tears from my eyes and realize they put Cara out front as a distraction.
I spin, looking back at the diner. Expecting to see twenty Fort Caroliners with their guns drawn.
But it’s just Jamie with his empty rifle.
A gust of wind blows the trees behind the diner and the leaves flip up, showing their gray-green bellies against the dark sky. Lightning flashes. I turn back to Cara, calling over the wind.
“You’re alone?”
She nods. Alone again, just like at the motel.
“Why are you here?”
She mumbles something but a crack of thunder drowns her out. The wind picks up again and the first, fat drops of rain begin pelting the cracked asphalt. She followed the detours she gave us. But if she was trying to stop us, trying to get Fort Caroline to find us, why give us detours? Why give us anything? Why not go right to Sheriff Denton and tell him we were planning to leave?
These are obviously not questions that are going to be answered in this storm.
“Come on.” I can’t hear a thing so I reach for Cara’s arm. She flinches away but picks up her bike and slowly walks forward.
As she heads toward the diner, Jamie gives me a questioning look. I stop and say to him quietly, “No one’s here. They would have come out by now.”
“We can’t trust her,” Jamie says. Cara rounds the corner of the diner, hiding her bike out of the way. Out of sight.
“Why would she provide detours? She knew the roads had been opened by Fort Caroline, so why provide us with detours in case they were blocked or destroyed? Detours we never ended up needing.”
Jamie doesn’t seem to get it. The rain is picking up and lightning flashes and thunder quickly follows.
I help him connect the dots. “It washerroute.”
Jamie’s eyes soften. “She mapped out her own route.”
“So she could follow us. They weren’t detours. It was her route and the places where she could meet up with us. She’s been following us. Alone.”
And there’s that magic word again: alone. She wasn’t with everyone else in the clearing the night we showed up and she didn’t go to the final fireworks show the night we left either. It’s possible she went to the first night of fireworks on the third of July, but I highly doubt it.
Jamie looks back at the diner. Cara is already seated at a booth. He lowers the empty rifle and we run inside. And just in time. Pea-size hail begins to patter against the glass windows. Cara’s hands are folded on the table in front of her.
Jamie slides into the seat across from her but I remain standing.
“Are you hungry?” I ask over the pelting hail.
She nods and quickly unzips her pack. It’s filled with canned food.
“Holy shit.” She flinches. Jamie’s eyebrows go up.
“Did you steal all that?”
“It’s mine,” she says. “I’ve been saving it.”
Jamie and I share a look. She’s been planning to leave for a while; it just took us to get her to do it. Maybe she didn’t want to be alone. Like Jamie. Like me.
I sit down in the booth across from her, putting my chin in my hand. “What are we three musketeers all in the mood for?”
In the dim light of the diner, Cara glances at me. And I think I can almost see her smile.
