“Did you tell him about this investigator?”
“He wasn’t working for the company back then.”
They weren’t involved, her instincts told her. None of these men were. Except maybe that fake investigator.
“Any chance you saw the car this man was driving?”
The Pickleweed DMV was the usual small, crowded, and unpleasant space. Ruby pulled her ticket, glanced at the wall clock, took a seat on a hard plastic chair, and closed her eyes. She had learned to do this in foster care to deal with her grief. She left this world and went into her imagination, where creatures roamed and the sky split with joy. In her daydreams, when she was younger, she had found her mom, and the two of them were reunited. These dreams she replayed over and over again. The moment. The scene. The happiness.
As she got older, the fantasies changed. Her mother hadsurvived—she had never been taken. The two of them were as Ruby was now. Walking in a park. Or playing with a baby. Ruby had never had a child, never wanted one, and she wondered if that would have been different if her mom were still here. She didn’t have an answer to that. What she did know was that she was happy in these daydreams; she was whole. In some of the fantasies, she and her mom were traveling. In others, she was at her mom’s deathbed, and she was saying a proper goodbye. She was thanking her for all the years.
She blinked back tears, there in the impossible chair, and then her number was called.
A helpful if exhausted-looking clerk glanced at her license.
“You can access the Oregon DMV from here, correct?” Ruby asked.
The woman looked over her shoulder at the clock. She had five minutes until closing. “We’re all linked now,” she said. “Can’t tell you everything, but I can give you basics. Including registrations.”
“Let’s start with Charise Brown.”
The woman typed. It took a few moments.
“Looks here like she has a state identification. No driver’s license. Last renewed, wow, years ago. Nothing since.”
Ruby nodded. Since Charise had never been scanned into the system, she had never been declared dead. She was a nonentity.
“How about a Jim Higginbottom?”
“Oh. Says here he’s law enforcement. I’m not sure I can give you information.”
“No?”
“I’d have to check—you know how it is. People go looking for police, sometimes. He wouldn’t want anyone tracking down his private vehicles.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t. Let’s try his wife, then.”
The clerk had begun to look uncomfortable. She glanced at the clock again. They had two minutes left. The security guard was ushering people out and getting ready to lock the door.
“Rosanna Higginbottom.”
“Okay. But this is the last one.”
“Fair enough.”
The woman typed.
“Looks like she had a license. Expired now. Last car she had, let’s see—ooh it’s been a time.”
“Let me guess. A Datsun.”
“That’s right. Do you want the plate number?”
“I sure do.”
36.
The next morning, Ruby was standing in front of one of the buildings in downtown Pickleweed, this one housing thePickleweed Current. She was drinking coffee from a large to-go cup and looking at the mural painted on the wall outside.
