Remembers me all of his gracious parts,

Stuffs out his vacant garment with his form...

Try as she did, she couldn’t recall the last few lines of the passage.

Then, looking at the child sleeping next to her, decided that maybe that was for the best.

A little while later, too exhausted to go on, she pulled into a rest stop and parked among the trucks and campers and slept a little.

She did not feel the presence of Mr. Hands anywhere near them.

Maybe, just maybe, he hadn’t tracked them down yet.

Chapter Nine

She spotted the parking-lot carnival around six-thirty p.m. as they drove through one of the many small nameless towns that lay between Cedar Hill and the cabin.

Randy spotted it a second later and his face lit up; no longer a grief-stricken, heartbroken, soul-sick shell of the child he once was, but a kid again, eyes filled with wonder and excitement.

“Do you want to stop for a little bit?” Lucy asked, hoping that the cold terror she was feeling in her gut wasn’t evident to him.

“Could we?”

“Of course.”

Then: “It’ll be fun.”

It was a prayer.

* * *

Lucy took Randy on the Ferris wheel—not so much because either of them wanted to ride the damned thing—both of them were scared of heights—but because, from Up Here, Lucy could look about for some sign of Mr. Hands approaching from the distance.

He might be able to slip between the cracks in the walls of the finite and the infinite, but he could not hide from her gaze.

She neither saw nor sensed any sign of him.

Back on the ground, she reluctantly agreed to let Randy ride on the kiddies’ train. She remained outside the partitions and watched as the train went ‘round and ‘round its circular track, all the time following it on foot, her eyes wide and unblinking, her gaze never once, not once, not even for a second, leaving Randy Patterson’s face.

The other parents standing around the train ride were more than a little wary of her intensity.

After he disembarked the ride and she’d taken hold of his hand—a little too tightly, but of that she was unaware—Randy asked her if they could get a couple of hot dogs and root beers. They did, and sat down at one of the many picnic tables set up under a canopy just off the midway. Randy devoured his hot dog, then—seeing that she was not eating hers—asked: “Can I have your hot dog?”

“Of course,” she said, pushing it toward him.

He took a bite out of it, then stared at her while he chewed.

“What is it?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”

“How come you followed the train like you did?”

“I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“But you could see me okay just standing there. You didn’t have to follow me like that.”

She smiled, trying to lighten his suddenly-serious mood. “Did I embarrass you?”