Chapter 58: Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf
The Connecticut stretch of I-95 was the kind of highway that exists purely as time between places — flat, functional, committed to nothing scenic. McQueen held eighty-five without complaint, the winter sun making something almost glamorous out of the asphalt.
Ted was on the dashboard, which meant the dashboard had opinions.
"My point," he said, with the specific energy of someone who had been building to a point for forty minutes, "is that the entire concept of the American road trip is a coping mechanism."
Rango kept his eyes on the road. "For what?"
"For the fact that Americans invented a country too big to meaningfully inhabit. So instead of acknowledging that, they made driving through it into a personality." He gestured at the passing scenery — flat, brown, dormant. "Look at this. What is this? This is nothing. And yet there are songs about it."
"There are good songs about it."
"There are many songs about it. That's the coping mechanism. You can't fix the scale so you make it romantic." He paused. "In Ghana, if someone told you to drive eight hours to get somewhere, you would ask them why they didn't plan better. Here, you put on Springsteen and call it freedom."
Megan, in the passenger seat, said nothing. She had her book open and her expression set to I am not participating in this.
Emma was asleep against Rango's arm, which made lane changes an exercise in geometry. She'd been awake for most of New York and then fallen asleep somewhere around Bridgeport with the completeness of a child who decides sleep is happening and immediately makes it true.
She was wearing a red dress — her choice, this morning, paired with red shoes, the whole effect being that she looked like someone had illustrated her rather than dressed her.
"The Curator," Ted said, changing subjects the way he changed everything — abruptly, but with clear internal logic, "said next time, just get lost. Those were the exact words?"
"Approximate."
"And you consider that a successful leave request."
"He approved it."
"Under duress."
"Leave approved is leave approved, Ted."
Ted made a sound. "In any functional institution, there is a difference between approval and surrender. What you're describing is surrender."
"I'll bring him something from Boston."
"What do you bring a museum curator from Boston?"
"I'll figure it out when I'm there."
Megan turned a page. "The Witch Academy doesn't have a gift shop," she said, to her book.
"How do you know that?"
"I know what it is." She turned another page. "There's no gift shop."
Rango and Ted exchanged a look — the specific look of two people acknowledging that Megan routinely knew things she hadn't been told and that asking follow-up questions produced diminishing returns.
The service area appeared around noon — one of those interstate rest stops that tries hard with the landscaping and mostly succeeds, picnic tables arranged around a stretch of actual grass, the sky performing the pale blue that December manages on its good days.
They took a table in the sun. Fast food from the counter inside — burgers, fries, the kind of meal that's entirely honest about what it is. Emma ate half a chicken sandwich with focused seriousness and then looked at the remaining half like she was deciding whether to commit.
Ted, across the table, was writing something on a paper napkin with a Sharpie he'd produced from somewhere.
Rango watched him for a moment.
"What are you doing?"
Ted looked up with the expression of a man whose private business has been noticed. "Writing something."
"On a napkin."
"Paper was unavailable."
Rango reached across and turned the napkin so he could read it.
Dear Rebecca — I think of you when I am far from home. The distance between New York and wherever I am at this moment feels specific and unkind—
Rango set it back down.
"You're writing Rebecca a letter."
"I'm writing Rebecca a draft," Ted said, with dignity. "There's a distinction."
"Ted. You used the phrase 'specific and unkind' to describe I-95."
"It is specific and unkind."
"She's going to think you're describing her."
Ted looked at the napkin. Looked at Rango. "Is she?"
"Give me the Sharpie."
"I'm not giving you—"
"Ted."
A pause. The Sharpie appeared.
Rango smoothed the napkin, thought for a moment — thought about what it actually meant to be two states away from someone you were thinking about, what that was actually like from the inside — and started writing.
Rebecca —
I'm somewhere on I-95, which is not a romantic location, but you came to mind anyway and I didn't want to let the thought go to waste.
I've been thinking about the way you explained the Minoan collection on Tuesday. You talked about it like you'd been there. That's a specific kind of intelligence that's hard to fake and easy to fall for.
I don't know what that means yet. But I thought you should know it's been noted.
— Ted
He slid it back.
Ted read it twice. His expression went through several phases.
"That's," he said. "That's considerably better than mine."
"You were describing a highway as unkind."
"The highway is unkind." He folded the napkin carefully. "But I take the point." He looked at Rango with something that was almost suspicious. "How do you know how to do that?"
"My mother wrote letters," Rango said. "I read them."
Ted absorbed this. Filed it. Tucked the napkin into his jacket pocket with the care of something that mattered.
Emma, who had been listening to all of this from behind her chicken sandwich with the still attention of a child pretending not to pay attention, said nothing. But something shifted in her expression — too complicated for her face, briefly, and then smoothed away.
She slid off the bench.
"Restroom," she said, without looking at anyone, and walked toward the far side of the service area.
Rango watched her go — the red dress moving through the crowd, visible from a distance, which was the point of red — and turned back to his coffee.
Megan had put her book down and was watching the same direction.
"She's fine," Rango said.
"I know," Megan said. "I'm just watching."
Three minutes.
Four.
Rango checked his watch with the casualness of someone who wasn't concerned and was doing a good job performing it.
Five minutes. For a restroom stop, at a service area, in the middle of the day.
He was about to say something neutral and non-alarming when the sound came from the tree line on the far side of the parking lot — not the restroom side, the other side, the side with the landscaped buffer strip that ran along the fence line.
"—Uncle!"
High and sharp and cutting through the ambient noise of the rest stop the way a specific frequency cuts through everything else.
Rango was standing before the echo finished.
Ted was already off the dashboard.
Megan had her coat in her hand.
The red dress was visible through the tree line — brief, intermittent, moving wrong. Not walking. Being moved.
Rango went through the parking lot at a pace that was technically not running and covered the distance in seconds that shouldn't have been enough seconds.
The tree line was thin — decorative, not concealing — and he cleared it in two strides and came out the other side into the buffer strip in time to see:
Emma. Red dress, red shoes. Both feet on the ground.
And a man — mid-forties, flannel, the build of someone who spent time outdoors and used it for nothing good — with one hand on her arm and the expression of someone who had not yet processed that the situation was about to change dramatically.
The man looked up at Rango.
Rango looked at the man.
The man released Emma's arm.
"She was— I thought she was lost," the man said. The specific cadence of improvised explanation.
"She wasn't," Rango said.
Emma crossed the distance between them and stood at his side without a word, which was its own kind of communication.
The man took a step back.
Then another.
Then turned and walked quickly toward the far end of the parking lot with the urgent purposefulness of someone who has decided that wherever they were going, they need to get there immediately.
Rango watched him go. Memorized the license plate of the truck he got into. Memorized the direction he pulled out.
Then he crouched down to Emma's level.
She was doing the specific stillness of someone who has processed something frightening and converted it into composure because composure felt safer. Her eyes were steady. Her hands were at her sides.
"You okay?" he said.
A beat.
"I called you uncle," she said, "because it was the fastest word."
"Good instinct."
"He said there was a dog." She looked at the tree line. "I knew there wasn't a dog."
"Yeah." Rango stayed at her level. "You did good. Calling out. Moving toward people." He paused. "You also walked further than we said."
Emma said nothing.
"Not a lecture," he said. "Just an accounting." He stood. Put one hand briefly on the top of her head — light, quick, the way you acknowledge something without making it bigger than it needs to be. "Come on. Ted's going to want to know you're fine and he's going to express that in a way that takes ten minutes."
The corner of Emma's mouth moved.
Not quite a smile. The architecture of one.
They walked back through the tree line, into the parking lot, into the sun.
Behind them, on I-95 heading south, a truck with a memorized plate number moved away.
Rango would call it in from the road.
For now: Boston. The Academy. Whatever came next.
The red dress caught the light as they crossed the asphalt, visible from a long way off.
That, at least, had been the right call.
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