house.”
“I don’t want to stop.” This was true, she didn’t, and she’d been writing messages in motel Bibles to this effect for over a year now. Lilia saw motel Bibles as a kind of bulletin board, where messages might be left for other travelers following behind. When she was nine Lilia and her father lived together, a unit, usually in the same motel room or in the same small car, and the messages in motel Bibles were almost her only secret. She scrawled them furtively while her father was in the shower, taking pleasure in the idea that he wouldn’t approve. The shred of privacy afforded by having a secret somehow seemed about as close as she’d ever come to having her own room.
“In that case, kiddo, better come up with a new plan.”
“Let’s drive through Lafoy, and go to the library, and then stay at a motel, and then go to a restaurant and have ice cream, and then leave again.”
“I like that plan much better,” her father said.
Their lives were easiest in the summer, when they didn’t have to make up explanations for why Lilia wasn’t in school and there were other children to play with in the parks. They camped for months at a time when it was warm enough; a week at one campground, a week somewhere else. She liked camping, although it took her a long time to fall asleep in campgrounds. There was sometimes rain on the roof of her tent, and it rendered the night mysterious and full of hidden sounds. In campgrounds she heard footsteps, or sometimes the sounds of trains in the distance; lie still and she could hear the night trains passing, carrying freight between the prairies and the seas. They hiked in national parks and went to outdoor concerts in small towns. Her father loved music of almost any kind; he would seek out concerts and summer music festivals and drive for miles to get to them; at outdoor performances they’d sit together on the grass with bottles of lemonade and when the music started he’d close his eyes and seem very distant.
It was harder in the wintertime. They tried to stay in the Southern states during the school year because Lilia’s father hated cold weather and Lilia liked the desert and palm trees, but the explanations were more difficult. Sometimes when she got tired of lying about being homeschooled she’d stay in the motel room until three o’clock in the afternoon, reading books that her father brought her from a bookstore or working on the mathematics problems that he came up with for her; in the late afternoons they went to the movies, to a mall for ice cream, to a museum if there was one, to a park if it was warm enough. Her father insisted that she learn to swim, and to this end they stayed for nearly five months in a town near Albuquerque while she took a full course of after-school swimming lessons at the local pool. Strange being in the same place for so long; by the time she was good enough to dive from the high diving board and swim laps, she was skittish and uneasy and not sleeping well at night. The day after her first swim meet her father suggested that they go somewhere else, and she was happy to get back in the car and drive away again.
Her father didn’t like stopping for long in any one place, even after the first frantic year when capture seemed most imminent. Her father knew about endless travel, and he wanted to show her everything he knew. He had been born to American diplomats in Colombia, started high school in Bangkok, finished it in Australia, and then moved to the United States. He’d spent the next few years earning multiple degrees from a random sampling of universities, too restless to settle on any one of them; afterward he’d worked for a few months as an adjunct professor of languages until an unfortunate incident involving an undergrad who’d looked much older than seventeen had put an abrupt halt to his academic career. He’d worked as a shipping clerk for a while after that, taught himself to write software at night,
“I don’t want to stop.” This was true, she didn’t, and she’d been writing messages in motel Bibles to this effect for over a year now. Lilia saw motel Bibles as a kind of bulletin board, where messages might be left for other travelers following behind. When she was nine Lilia and her father lived together, a unit, usually in the same motel room or in the same small car, and the messages in motel Bibles were almost her only secret. She scrawled them furtively while her father was in the shower, taking pleasure in the idea that he wouldn’t approve. The shred of privacy afforded by having a secret somehow seemed about as close as she’d ever come to having her own room.
“In that case, kiddo, better come up with a new plan.”
“Let’s drive through Lafoy, and go to the library, and then stay at a motel, and then go to a restaurant and have ice cream, and then leave again.”
“I like that plan much better,” her father said.
Their lives were easiest in the summer, when they didn’t have to make up explanations for why Lilia wasn’t in school and there were other children to play with in the parks. They camped for months at a time when it was warm enough; a week at one campground, a week somewhere else. She liked camping, although it took her a long time to fall asleep in campgrounds. There was sometimes rain on the roof of her tent, and it rendered the night mysterious and full of hidden sounds. In campgrounds she heard footsteps, or sometimes the sounds of trains in the distance; lie still and she could hear the night trains passing, carrying freight between the prairies and the seas. They hiked in national parks and went to outdoor concerts in small towns. Her father loved music of almost any kind; he would seek out concerts and summer music festivals and drive for miles to get to them; at outdoor performances they’d sit together on the grass with bottles of lemonade and when the music started he’d close his eyes and seem very distant.
It was harder in the wintertime. They tried to stay in the Southern states during the school year because Lilia’s father hated cold weather and Lilia liked the desert and palm trees, but the explanations were more difficult. Sometimes when she got tired of lying about being homeschooled she’d stay in the motel room until three o’clock in the afternoon, reading books that her father brought her from a bookstore or working on the mathematics problems that he came up with for her; in the late afternoons they went to the movies, to a mall for ice cream, to a museum if there was one, to a park if it was warm enough. Her father insisted that she learn to swim, and to this end they stayed for nearly five months in a town near Albuquerque while she took a full course of after-school swimming lessons at the local pool. Strange being in the same place for so long; by the time she was good enough to dive from the high diving board and swim laps, she was skittish and uneasy and not sleeping well at night. The day after her first swim meet her father suggested that they go somewhere else, and she was happy to get back in the car and drive away again.
Her father didn’t like stopping for long in any one place, even after the first frantic year when capture seemed most imminent. Her father knew about endless travel, and he wanted to show her everything he knew. He had been born to American diplomats in Colombia, started high school in Bangkok, finished it in Australia, and then moved to the United States. He’d spent the next few years earning multiple degrees from a random sampling of universities, too restless to settle on any one of them; afterward he’d worked for a few months as an adjunct professor of languages until an unfortunate incident involving an undergrad who’d looked much older than seventeen had put an abrupt halt to his academic career. He’d worked as a shipping clerk for a while after that, taught himself to write software at night,