Picture Me Gone by Meg Rosoff Read Free Book Online

a foreign one. She spends a long time talking to Gil about the camp Matthew owns near the Canadian border. No phone, no electricity, no running water. No Internet. She gives us a map with the route and our destination marked in red pen. We have GPS, she says, but it gets blinky up there. Best to have the map. Matt doesn’t believe in GPS, she adds, as if he’ll be with us on the way, disapproving of our methods.
    On the other side of the map is a list of phone numbers, including hers, Matthew’s mobile and the Automobile Association of America in case of an accident. She’s a very organized person, is Suzanne.
    The camp, she says, is the only place I can imagine him going. Not that my imagination is anything to go by. The drive should take about seven hours. Depends on traffic. Crazy to do it in one day, and what if you get all the way there and it’s shut up and empty? This route, she says, running her finger up along a long thin lake, won’t add much to your journey but is nicer.
    So we’re hunting down a missing person via the scenic route?
Hello
? Tempting though it is, I don’t say this out loud.
    You’ve come all this way, she says. At least don’t spend your entire time on the thruway.
    OK, Gil says. Don’t worry about us. We’re good at maps.
    The expression on Suzanne’s face makes me think she’s anxious, but not about us and maybe not about Matthew. What does that leave?
    I kiss Gabriel and he beams at me and waves his hands and kicks his feet so I pick him up and hug him close. So far this trip has been useful if only to let me know that I like babies. Or maybe just this one. I don’t want to put him down but I do and he turns his attention to the wooden seagull that flaps over his high chair. As we leave I don’t dare look back in case he is waving his hands and feet at me.
    I’m outside dragging my bag to the car when I feel a feather-light tap on my calf. It’s Honey nudging me with her nose. Her eyes are lowered.
    I glance at Gil but Suzanne is too quick for us.
    Take her along, she says. Please. It’s not fair to leave her here on her own all day. And I can’t stand it, frankly. She’s his dog. If you do find him, at least she’ll be overjoyed.
    I’ll ride in the back with her, I tell Gil, just till she gets used to us.
    Sit in front, Suzanne says with surprising force. She’ll be fine on her own.
    Gil looks like a man trapped in a revolving door.
    But what about motels, he asks, do they allow dogs?
    Just a minute, calls Suzanne, who has already dashed back into the house. When she returns, it’s with a slim paperback called
Driving With Dogs,
and there are pages and pages of dog-friendly motels.
    Gil is stuck and I am overjoyed. Suzanne disappears once more and reappears with a brown leather lead, a bed, a bag of dry dog food and two bowls. I feel a sudden pang of empathy for Matthew. It’s hard to imagine that Suzanne doesn’t always get her own way.
    I stand by the front of the car while Honey sniffs the open door and the inside, and only then steps up carefully into the back. She drops her hindquarters into a graceful sit, waiting quietly.
    He took her everywhere, says Suzanne, her voice sharp as glass. I avoid looking at Gil, but I can feel the expression on his face. Like me, he has begun to side with Matthew against Suzanne, if such a side exists.
    Suzanne looks everywhere but at us. She runs one hand over a scrape in the front bumper. I hope you’re not as bad a driver as your friend, she says.
    All three of us are thinking of Owen and pretending we’re not, but the truth is that Gil is not the world’s best driver. Suzanne would have a nervous breakdown if she saw the state of our London car.
    We wave good-bye. Suzanne holds Gabriel’s hand and makes him wave back, but she looks as if she’s forgotten us already.
    • • •
    It’s only a few miles to the motorway and though Gil seems a little hesitant at first, he relaxes once we’re driving in straight lines.