Free Dreamland: A Novel by Nicholas Sparks Page A

Residential streets gradually gave way to commercial ones, then, an hour and a half later, to an industrial area, with warehouses and a salvage yard and parking lots surrounded by chain-link fencing. Though there was no place to hide, the streets were empty. When they eventually reached the bus station, the entrance smelled of cigarette smoke and fried food and urine. They went inside. In the restroom, Beverly pinned her hair up with bobby pins and donned the wig that turned her from a long-haired blonde to a brunette with a pixie cut. She wrapped a long Ace bandage around her chest, making her breasts smaller, pulling it tight to the point that it was hard to breathe. She donned a baseball hat, and though it was still dark, she put on her sunglasses. Tommie didn’t recognize her when she emerged. She had told him to sit on one of the benches and explained that it was important not to wander off, and it was only after she removed her glasses while directly in front of him that his eyes widened in recognition. She walked him to an even more isolated bench in the corner of the terminal, one that was out of sight from the ticket window, and told him to sit quietly.
    There were only a few people milling about in the station when she went to the ticket window and took her place in line behind an elderly woman in a heavy brown cardigan sweater. When it was her turn, she stood before a man with bags under his eyes and a long side patch of stringy gray hair that he swept over his bald spot. She asked for two tickets to Chicago, and as she handed over the money, she mentioned casually that she and her sister were going to visit their mother. She didn’t want the man behind the Plexiglas to know she was traveling with her son, but apparently he didn’t care one way or the other—he barelyseemed to notice her as he handed her the tickets. Beverly returned to a bench kitty-corner from Tommie, where she could keep an eye on him but it wouldn’t be obvious that they were together. Every minute or so she would glance at him, then toward the entrance, searching beyond the glass for the black SUV with tinted windows, but thankfully it never appeared. She also studied other faces in the terminal, trying to memorize them, seeing if anyone was paying attention to a little boy sitting all alone, just in case. But no one seemed to care.
    Dawn arrived, a bright late-spring glare. In time, the engine of the appropriate bus began to idle beneath one of the aluminum canopies out back. With her stomach in knots, she sent Tommie ahead so he could pretend to be boarding with a man in a bomber jacket, a father and son traveling together. Through the windows, she watched Tommie follow the man toward seats near the rear of the bus. Others boarded, then she finally stepped aboard, walking past the thin, dark-haired bus driver. She took a seat in the second-to-last row; on the opposite side, in the next row up, was an older woman crocheting, moving the needle like a conductor standing in front of an orchestra. Tommie remained in his seat ahead of her until the bus started moving, just as she’d instructed, and when they reached the highway, he joined her. There, he leaned his head against her shoulder while she continued to watch the people on the bus, forcing herself to remember them and trying to figure out whether any of them had noticed anything amiss.
    She reminded herself of how careful she’d been. Gary was out of town, doing whatever secret thing it was he did for the government. They’d also left on a Saturday, and on each of the four previous weekends she’d made sure not to leave the house or even let Tommie play in the yard, establishing a pattern that would hopefully buy time. Using money she’d secretly saved over aperiod of six months, she set up automatic timers on the lights, which would come on and then go out in the evenings. With any luck, the driver in the black SUV wouldn’t know they were gone until the school bus showed up on