The first inkling he has that his father is not in on the plan to head north comes when they slip out through the back door instead of the front and cut across the brown January fields on foot. Until then Jack had assumed they would get a ride to the bus station in Cordia. Connor McCourt and his wife, Beth, share a three-room cottage at the end of the raked gravel drive, a quarter of a mile down the road. Jack’s father allows them to stay there rent-free, part of the arrangement he has with them. The both of them are full-time help, available to do whatever needs doing, from farming to scullery work. Connor is off to the gun show with Jack’s old man, but his fluorescent orange Road Runner is still here, parked alongside his bungalow.

“Why doesn’t Beth drive us?”

“The Road Runner needs a new whatsit.”

“Aren’t we going to say good-bye?”

“Naw. It’s her Saturday. We’ll let her sleep in for once, kid. Give ol’ Beth a break.”

They walk swiftly toward the tree line, his mother hauling the suitcase in one hand and squeezing his cold fingers in the other. Jack can see Connor and Beth’s cottage in its little stand of trees and wonders if Beth will look out the window and wonder why they’re carrying a suitcase across the furrowed field.

They wade through a few yards of stiff, frozen brush and come out on the edge of the highway. His mother marches them east along the side of the road, gravel crunching under their heels. With every step they put between themselves and his father’s sprawling red farmhouse, she seems more at ease with herself.

Jack and Bloom walk the ruler-straight highway in the strong, brassy morning light for around half an hour. His mother tells him about relations he will meet up north, people with colorful mental illnesses and amusing criminal histories. There is the aunt who fell in love with a parking meter and went to jail for taking a cutting torch to it so she could bring it home with her. There is the great-uncle who strangled someone’s poodle because he thought it was a Russian spy. Jack’s great-great-grandfather used to walk in the Easter parade, naked except for a loincloth, carrying a hundred-pound mahogany cross on his back and wearing a crown of thorns, until the town ordered him to stop—the blood on his face was scaring children. Jack is at turns incredulous, bemused, and thrilled. She might almost be describing a nineteenth-century freak show instead of family.

He sees his father’s F-150 coming before his mother does, Connor’s Road Runner following right behind it.

“Hey,” he says, pointing at the pickup, which is still half a mile away. “It’s Dad. I thought he went to the gun show.”