“A three-day sweep with sixty men is a thorough search for a three-year-old boy,” Thomas said. He signed the bottom of the permit with a quick, aggressive flourish of his pen. “The woods are deep out there. You know that.”
“I was at the rest stop today,” I said.
Thomas set the pen down on his desk calendar. The metal strap of his watch clinked against the wood.
“You need to stop visiting the highway, Margaret,” he said, his tone dropping into a lower, more authoritative register. “It has been eighteen years. Walking those shoulders is not safe, and it does not help anyone.”
“There was a toy in the dirt,” I said.
“There is always trash in the dirt near a rest stop,” Thomas said. He leaned forward, his gray eyes locking onto mine. “Go home. Let the people who are paid to handle these matters do their work.”
He picked up a stack of zoning files from his inbox, signaling the end of our meeting.
“You take care now, Margaret,” he said.
I left the town hall through the side exit, the brass handles cold in my hand, and walked back to my Buick in the gravel lot.
The tire blew three miles north of the rest stop, a sharp metal spike from the shoulder tearing through the rubber with a loud slap. I managed to guide the Buick onto the gravel verge, the passenger side dipping low toward the ditch.
The smell of damp pine needles was thick here, rising from the deep ditch where the trees grew close to the asphalt. A new tire would cost one hundred and eighty dollars, money I did not easily have in my savings.
I got out of the car and stood by the rear bumper, looking down at the flat rubber.
A man stepped out from the shadow of the pines, his boots crunching quietly on the dry needles. He wore a tattered brown coat that was too large for his frame, his face lined with the gray dust of the highway.
