Page 11 of At Midnight Comes the Cry
Russ looked toward the ceiling for a moment and made a sound between a sigh and a groan. “Okay. But as long as we’re in for a wait, do you mind if I take the car for an oil change? There’s a quickie place just down the road.”
Clare peeked into the stroller. Ethan’s thumb had slipped from his open mouth. “He’s out. Sure. And while you’re in the car, maybe you can call Kevin’s parents and ask if they have a key to his place. All nice and legal.” Russ gave her a Look as he strode off in the opposite direction of the maddening crowd.
She took the stroller and rolled it into position behind a mother accompanying what appeared to be the twins fromThe Shining. They turned around and stared at Clare, who smiled weakly.
Was there anything worse than standing in a long line with nothing to do except wait? Yes, apparently there was, as Clare listened to the whining, complaints, and occasional shower burst of tears as some child or another reached their limits. She and Ethan inched forward as more parents—mostly mothers—joined the queue behind them.
She was facedown in her phone, trying, without much success, to answer emails, when she registered someone trying to get her attention. “Hey, Reverend! Minister! With the baby!”
Clare glanced around. She was at the turning point of her section of the line, and no one behind or before her was calling. Then she saw her, two turnings ahead, in the same position. The woman from the tractor parade. There were probably twenty people in line between them, but from this vantage point, they could see each other clearly. “Meghan?”
“Hey, you remember.”
Clare didn’t point out it would be hard to forget, under the circumstances.
“Come up here. We can keep company.”
“Oh, I couldn’t cut the line like that.” She also wasn’t particularly motivated. Although she had given the woman her card. It had seemed the right thing to do at the time.
“I’ll come back to you, then.” Meghan ducked under the velvet rope and crossed to where Clare was standing. “You don’t mind,” she asked the mother of the creepy twins, “if I get behind you?”
The woman shook her head.
Meghan looked at the woman behind Clare, who had been trying to keep her restive sons from playing a game that involved punching each other. “You okay with me joining my friend here?”
“You were ahead of me anyway, so, sure.” She looked at Meghan more closely. “Where are your kids?”
“I gave ’em some money and let ’em loose. My oldest has his phone. I’ll call him when we get closer.”
“That’s brilliant!” The woman dug her wallet out of her purse and began giving instructions to her boys.
Clare looked at Ethan, still sleeping in his stroller. “Don’t you worryabout…” She waved a hand, taking in the constant movement of the crowd.
“‘Stranger danger’?” Meghan air-quoted the phrase. “That’s way overblown. Your kid’s in more danger every time you put him in a car. I’m what you call a free-range mama. My kids aren’t going to grow up not knowing how to cross the street without holding someone’s hand.” She nodded toward Ethan. “You should read up about it. It’s a whole movement.”
They shuffled forward a few feet. The perfectly normal conversation seemed strangely unreal.What did you expect, she was going to say Heil Hitler and lecture you on Christian nationalism?Yes, that was pretty much what Clare had been preparing for.
“Um. Were you raised that way?”
“Oh, God, no. I grew up in the ’burbs in Long Island.” Meghan laughed. “My folks drove me four blocks to school every day for years to keep me safe from the mean streets of Massapequa Park.”
“How did you wind up this far upstate?”
“Well, I couldn’t get into Stony Brook, with my grades.” She laughed again. “Not much of a shocker. I was much more into partying than studying. I thought I’d do two years at a community college and then transfer—that’s what a lot of kids I knew did. But I wasdesperateto get out of Long Island. I already wanted to be in the country. I think people are just more real here, you know?”
“Let me guess. You went to SUNY Adirondack.”
“Go, Timberwolves!”
They moved forward several steps. The line seemed to be going faster. Clare wondered if it was improved organization by the mall, or just people giving up and dropping out. “So you must have met your husband up here.”
“Yeah, Rick was in the criminal justice program, thinking of your husband being a cop.”
Clare tried not to let her surprise show. “Your husband’s law enforcement?”
Meghan shook her head. “No. He didn’t make it through basic. Heshoulda known, really. He had the same problem when he joined the marines. Some guys just aren’t cut out to be, you know, packaged into a little box just like a hundred other little boxes.”
“Yeah, that’s… one way to describe the process.”
