The wind was behind me, and I felt it as wolf breath, hot and stinking of old meat, raising the hairs on the back of my neck. I pulled off the highway only when my tugboat of a car needed another tank of gas. The Buick was a guzzler. I fueled up on these stops, too, on black gas station coffee as fumy and potent as the brew the car was drinking. I bought Gretel some kibble and got a jar of peanut butter and some crackers for myself, but I was scared too sick in the pit of me to eat much. I started off driving as fast as the Buick would let me, but I made myself drop to eight above the speed limit. I wasn’t sure which ID to use if a cop stopped me; I didn’t want to swap to Ivy so close to home, nor did I want a ticket in Rose Mae’s name, pointing out my trail. Gret sat up in the passenger seat beside me, snuffing my hair and jamming her wet nose against my ear, worried and vigilant and driving me bat crap. Once we got out of Texas, I opened the passenger-side window for her.
