Free Hailey's War by Jodi Compton Page B

attention. Her hair was cinnamon-colored, in curls weighed down into near-straightness by their length. Her eyes were green-brown, and she had a heart-shaped face. She wasn’t very tall—maybe five-two—and slender except for the little potbelly a lot of girls had nowadays, the obsession for flat abs being over. She looked from Herlinda to me.
    â€œHey,” I said. “I’m Hailey.”
    â€œThank you for coming,” she said.
    â€œI was sorry to hear about your boyfriend. Serena told me,” I said.
    She nodded and said something that I thought was “Thank you” but couldn’t be sure: She was that quiet. We both looked to Herlinda to take over.
    Herlinda did, fixing hot chocolate and offering pan dulce, both of which I accepted, although I wasn’t hungry. Then she spread a map of Mexico on the table and began the debriefing I’d been promised. “Have you ever been to Mexico?” she asked.
    â€œTo Baja California, yes,” I said.
    â€œDid you drive?”
    I nodded. It had been CJ’s idea, a road trip to a seaside town he’d heard about.
    â€œGood,” Herlinda said. “So you know a little about driving on Mexican roads.” Even so, she went on to tell me things I’d already heard: that in isolated areas, drivers tended to go down the center of the road until they saw oncoming traffic, and that it was common for both parties to be jailed in case of a traffic accident. If I were in one, she said, I should be exceedingly polite to the police and keep my ears open for the subtle implication that a bribe would clear the whole thing up. I nodded assent. Her son leaned against the refrigerator and listened.
    Then Herlinda turned her attention to the map. I saw a star, hand-drawn in ink, in the northern Sierra Madre region.
    â€œThat’s where we’re going?” I said.
    â€œIt’s the nearest town to the village,” Herlinda said.
    My confusion must have shown on my face—I didn’t understand the distinction she was making—so Herlinda said, “You won’t take Nidia all the way; the road isn’t passable by car. You’ll take her to this town, and you’ll see the post office there. It has a Mexican flag over it. Take Nidia inside, and the postman will take her up to the village when he goes with the mail. They do it all the time, her mother says.”
    â€œIf the road’s not passable by car, how does the postman go up? Horseback?”
    Herlinda smiled. “He has four-wheel-drive.”
    I was embarrassed at my assumption. “If I’d known,” I said, “I could’ve got something with four-wheel.”
    Herlinda shook her head. “It’s not just that,” she said. “The road’s narrow and it’s steep, and I guess city Mexicans don’t do well with it.” She left the obvious unsaid:
Not to mention gringos
.
    Then she looked up at the kitchen doorway. I followed her gaze and saw a thin girl of maybe twelve or thirteen there, wearing a long pink nightshirt.
    â€œYou’re supposed to be in bed,” Herlinda told her.
    â€œI wanted to say good-bye to Nidia.”
    I moved from the kitchen counter and told Nidia, “I’ll take yourbags out to the car,” thinking they’d want privacy for their good-byes.
    Outside, I sat behind the wheel of the car I’d rented, a powerful V6 Impala . When I’d first driven it that afternoon, I felt a small rush of elation and power. Then, just as quickly, I’d been stabbed by a memory: Wilshire Boulevard and a hard thump from the front end of my car.
    He darted out of nowhere; it was an accident; there was nothing you could have done
. It had become my mantra in moments like these. But I wondered, if I ever owned a vehicle again, how long it would take before I could drive without thinking of Trey Marsellus.

eight
    It was in northern Arizona that I first tried to have a substantial