“Here.” Arthur tossed her a warm, heavy flannel shirt.
She wrapped it around her shoulders, teeth chattering. “Can we turn on the heat?”
He shot her a look of apology. “Heat’s broken.”
“Oh.”
The air in the van pressurized as the storm grew more intense, lighting up the night sky overhead with brilliant cracks of lightning. Eva yawned to pop her ears as they slowed to a crawl. When the road turned slick and muddy, Arthur eased onto its shoulder. “We’ve got to stop,” he said as he brought the van to a halt.
“What? We can’t!”
“If we can’t drive in this, neither can they. And wecan’tdrive in this.” Arthur patted the wheel. “My girl’s got a delicate suspension.”
Eva’s helpless laugh did nothing to stall the anxiety building in her chest.
Arthur’s hand lifted off the wheel and stretched toward her for a moment before he seemed to change his mind and set it awkwardly on the dash instead. “Hey. We’ll leave as soon as the rain lets up, okay?”
“Promise?” Eva felt like a child demanding his word, but she didn’t care.
“I promise.” He smiled wearily, his eyes a treasure box of hazel. Stone. Soil. Grass. Gold. All the colors of the earth, ensconced in his irises.
“I like the beard,” Eva blurted out. Impulsively. Stupidly.
Arthur’s eyes widened in surprise, and he touched his jaw self-consciously. “It’s new.”
“It’s nice.” Her neck flamed with hot discomfort. Eva hurried on, eager to change the subject. “Do you have a medical kit?”
“In the back,” Arthur hedged.
“Good.” She pointed to the gash in his eyebrow. “You need stitches.”
He stiffened. “The hell I do.”
“You want to risk infection?”
“If you stitch me up, I’ll surely risk infection.”
Sometimes he made her want to scream. “Medical kit. Where is it?” Eva demanded.
After a tense staring contest, Arthur grumbled and climbed into the back portion of the van. Eva craned her head to see, but his living space was obscured in shadows.
“Ev!” Arthur cried out in sudden alarm. “There’s a cat in my bed!”
She twisted in her seat. “What?”
“Why is there a cat in my bed?!”
She scrambled over the divider, awkwardly trying to find a way to fit her body into the cramped space. A neatly made bed had been elevated off the van’s floor, with storage space cleverly positioned beneath it. Outside, rain plonked hard against the van’s vintage roof. Arthur had pressed himself against the back door of the Volkswagen, chest heaving as he stared at the blanket on his pillow.
The blanket twitched, then rolled over. A little gray kitten batted at the coverlet’s rust-colored tassels.
Eva gasped and scooped up the kitten, tucking it into the wide chest pocket of her overalls, kangaroo-style. “Oh, you little rascal!”
“What? Why is it…?” Arthur fumbled his words. He looked, ironically, like the very creature currently making him freeze up, his body pressed far from the object of his fear into the side of the Volkswagen.
“We left the windows rolled down. She must have climbed inside.”
“This isyourcat?”
