Find Me

Charles wondered how far into that visit Mallory’s houseguest had discovered the merits of full confession. He could not get the image out of his mind-Sava

“Toward the end, Sava

And then?

Charles waited-and waited. Patience fraying, then lost, and he said, “So… stolen letters, diverted phone calls. Cassandra never heard from Peyton when he was on the road?”

Mallory shook her head. “She was worried. She thought he might’ve wrecked the car. Peyton didn’t have any family, so my mother called some of his old friends along the road. That’s how she knew he was still traveling. And then she had to wonder why he never called or wrote to her. Months went by, but she never did find out. Then she gave up.”

“Cassandra never heard from him again?”

“No. After a long time, she decided that he’d just abandoned us. I always thought so, too… until I found Sava

“You knew this woman when you were a child?”

“I never met her. When I was little, Sava

“So your father never went back to Chicago?”

“He had no reason to come back,” said Mallory. “And that was more of Sava

Charles knew this theme of obsessive love; he had heard that tune playing inside his own head several times a day for all the years he had known Mallory. “Well, now I understand why you despised that woman.”

“No, you don’t. Not yet.”

Maddeningly, she left the table, swinging her room key as she walked away.

On the road again the next morning, Charles made his first error of the day by begging an explanation for the initials O.B. Mallory dodged all conversation with sleep until late afternoon, when they were driving into more congested traffic.

In the area of Los Angeles, Californians had apparently not grasped the concept of passing lanes and turn signals, but this was merely harrowing. The last leg of the trip was the most grueling. Only a few miles along Santa Monica Boulevard, traffic was at a bumper-to-bumper standstill. He might have saved them from this ordeal. Six news bulletins had tried to warn him off, but he had been determined to drive this historic route to the end.

Mallory, however, assured him that it was a better fate to be shot in the head than to die of old age on this twelve-mile-long parking lot of detours and road construction. “Pull into that gas station,” she said, nodding toward a nearby escape path. “This is the end of the road.”

“Oh, no,” he said, hardly believing that he was suggesting this, “we have another ten miles to go before we reach Ocean Boulevard. That’s the official finish to Route 66.” And then, at the end of this road, if he still had his wits, he pla

“No,” she said. “Stop the car. This is where my father’s road trip ended.” She kept her silence until he had pulled into the lot and parked the car some distance from the gasoline pumps and a line of customer vehicles.

Charles was somber now, for he believed that he knew what was coming next, and it gave him hope and despair in equal amounts. According to Mallory, the last letter for O.B. had been mailed from Barstow far behind them. This tale could have only one logical end.

Mallory was staring at the gas station. “There used to be a bar on this lot, and there was a phone booth on the corner. He stopped here to call Chicago one last time. Sava

“But that’s madness. Sava

“It helps if you think like a cop. That was when I knew she’d pla

“Your mother saved Sava

“And she never knew her best friend tried to burn her to death.”

Mallory left the car and walked toward the corner. She moved slowly, perhaps using the time to rebuild a long-gone telephone booth so that she could watch Peyton Hale make his last call. “He believed my mother was dead when he hung up the phone and walked into the bar.” She turned to face the gas station, where that saloon had once stood. She rose up on the balls of her feet, chin lifting, anticipating, waiting for her father to finally put down his last glass and come back outside.

“I found the old police report. He drained half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s before he got behind the wheel again. He backed up the car to the end of the parking lot, then aimed it at the brick wall.”

She closed her eyes, as if she had just heard the impact of man and machine smashed across a wall that was no longer there. “He went through the windshield, no airbags then, no seat belt. They found most of the blood high up on the bricks where he cracked open his skull.” She raised her eyes the better to see the blood that she had only heard about and read about. “And they found his body on the crushed hood of the car.”

When she had returned to the convertible, Charles started up the engine, feeling the imperative to get her away from this place. “We’ll finish it for him, all right? We’ll go to the end of the road.”

There was no protest on her part, but he knew better than to take this for consent. She simply did not care-about anything. Portrait of a woman on the unwind.

But one thing was a certainty on this road where paradox was the everyday thing: this sad news was reason for rejoicing: her father had died before she was born, and Mallory had not committed patricide on a dark road in Arizona.

They rolled on in silence and finally reached the official end of Route 66. Turning left on Ocean Boulevard, he drove on to the famous pier mentioned in every guidebook. It looked rather like a circus in progress. Electing something more tranquil, he chose the beachfront parking lot, then led her across the wide expanse of sand to the water’s edge. “Later,” he said, “after you were born, Cassandra never tried to contact your father?”

Mallory shook her head. “My mother waited a long time. She was eight months pregnant with me before she gave up on him and went home to Louisiana, where I was born. And after a while, my father just forgot about her-and me.”

Oh, wait! Back up!

“After a while ? You mean after you were born? Peyton didn’t die in the crash?”

An hour had passed before Mallory would speak to him again, and then he learned that Peyton Hale had been badly mangled. One leg had been smashed into twenty-six pieces, and his skull had also been broken, yet he had survived.