Chapter 170: The Wards

Chapter 170: The Wards
They talked to Mara first. Del had expected it to be harder than it was, and then once they were inside the small building, she understood why it wasn't.
Mara was twenty-four, not twenty-five. She had the kind of tired that didn’t just come from a long day—it felt like she’d been worn down for a long time. When that feeling eased a little after she got here, she thought it meant something bigger.
She came from Ohio. Just said it was a bad situation and didn’t go into details. She’d been driving without a plan and ran out of money a couple of states away. That’s when she met Ruth at a gas station. They talked for about twenty minutes, and somehow, Ruth said exactly what Mara needed to hear.
And she'd been here four months. She didn't think she was a prisoner. She thought she was healing.
Del sat across from her on a low wooden stool. She told her about the barn—the crates, the labels, the bottles on the shelf, and what she thought they were.
She watched Mara’s face as it sank in. First confusion, then that empty look.
Oliver stood near the door and didn't say anything.
Mara cried for a while. Del sat with her through it without trying to move her along because there was no good reason to rush a person through finding out something like this.
When it eased, Mara looked at the wall and said, "I knew something was off about the prayer."
"What about it?" Del said.
"She never used God's name. Ever." Mara looked at her hands. "I thought it was just her denomination. I didn't—I should have pushed on it."
"You were tired," Del said. "And someone was kind to you."
Mara looked at her. "Are you taking me with you?"
"Yes," Del said.
Mara looked at Oliver for a moment. Oliver looked back at her without expression.
"Okay," Mara said.
It took forty minutes to get Mara ready. She didn't have much — a bag, some clothes, a phone with a dead battery that she'd stopped charging weeks ago because Ruth had gently suggested that the noise of the outside world wasn't serving her healing.
Oliver had the car running when they came out of the small building. The Ward's second car—a mud-colored sedan, practical and anonymous. Del had heard him take the keys from the house sometime before dawn and hadn't asked about the how of it, and he hadn't offered.
She did ask now. "How about Ruth and Carl?"
Oliver looked at the windshield.
"Oliver?"
"Get in," he said.
Del got in. Mara got in the back, clutching her bag in her lap, looking out the window at the property she'd been living on for four months as it began to move away behind them. Del watched her face in the side mirror.
Mara didn't look devastated exactly. She looked like someone who had just been handed back a version of themselves they'd been missing and wasn't sure yet whether they were glad about it or just disoriented.
Del thought she understood that.
Then they were on the dirt track leading back to the road, the dry fence-line trees on either side, the flat Texas sky doing its enormous thing above everything.
Del looked at the farmhouse in the wing mirror as it shrank behind them. The light was on in the kitchen window. The warm yellow of it against the early morning.
She looked at Oliver's hands on the wheel and looked at the road ahead. She didn't ask again.
They drove for two hours before Oliver pulled into a truck stop outside a town that had one of everything and not much of any of it. He filled the tank, came back to the car, and looked at Mara in the back seat.
"There's a payphone inside," he said. "Or you can use the cashier's phone. Call someone. Family, a friend, anyone."
Mara looked at him. "Why are you helping me?"
Oliver looked at her for a moment. "Because you were on their list," he said. "And now you're not."
Mara looked confused, then got out of the car and went inside.
Del watched her go through the truck stop's glass door.
"She'll be all right," Oliver said.
"You don't know that."
"Well, she has a better chance now than she did yesterday."
Del looked at him.
"Oliver," she said.
He looked at her.
She opened her mouth and then closed it. She looked at the windshield. A truck pulled in across the lot, its engine a low diesel rumble that filled the quiet for a moment.
"Never mind," she said.
He looked at her for another second. Then he nodded, as if she'd said something he'd already known and was just waiting for her to catch up to.
Mara came back out twenty minutes later. She stood by the car and told them her sister was coming. Four hours out. She'd wait at the truck stop. She looked at Del when she said it and not at Oliver, and Del understood that.
Del got out and stood with her for a moment by the car door.
"Don't go back," Del said. "I know that's obvious. But sometimes obvious things need saying."
"I won't," Mara said. Then her brows furrowed. "Who are you? The two of you."
Del thought about how to answer that. "People who needed somewhere to stop," she said. "Same as you."
Mara looked at her. She looked at Oliver, still in the driver's seat, not pretending to listen. She looked back at Del.
“Thank you…”
Del just smiled, then got back in the car. Oliver pulled out of the lot and onto the road heading south, and for a few miles neither of them said anything. Mara stood in the lot watching them go, her bag at her feet, and Del watched her in the mirror until the distance took her.
Oliver reached over. His hand found Del’s on the seat between them. He didn't look at her when he did it—kept his eyes on the road. He turned his palm up under hers and waited.
Del looked at their hands. She thought about the sixteen crates. She thought about Mara watching them leave. She thought about Ruth and Carl.
She turned her hand over and let her fingers settle against his. Then she looked out at the flat Texas distance and let her hand stay where it was.