The Mural. Michael Mallory

that’s the end of my marching orders. I only bought a one-way bus ticket.”

      “Can Noni come with us?” Robynn asked excitedly.

      “Well, one of the problems with that is that I’m driving a pickup truck with a bench seat, and I’m not sure I can fit all of us in.”

      “Oh, I could ride the little one on my lap,” Althea offered, smiling toward Robynn, who smiled back.

      How much simpler things were in Althea’s generation, Jack thought. He shook his head. “Not these days, I’m afraid. She has to be in a car seat. Maybe I could leave the truck here and find a place to rent a car.”

      “Oh, you’re going to so much trouble for this,” Althea said. “Let’s just give the truck a try and see if we fit, first.”

      Jack reluctantly agreed. The waitress brought the check on a plastic tray, topped with three root beer barrels. He scooped up the candies before Robynn saw them and glanced at the check, then fished out a ten from his wallet and placed it on the tray. “Are we ready to go, then?”

      “I have to go again, Daddy.”

      “Okay, punkin.” As he started to get up, Althea said, “You know, it wouldn’t hurt me, either. I’ll go back with her.” With a grandmotherly smile, she took Robynn’s willing hand and the two strode back to the restrooms.

      The last thing Jack had anticipated was picking up an elderly, possibly unstable woman and including her in the travels. Jesus, was he in control of anything any more? Then again, she might definitely be a help with Robynn, and it really wasn’t that far to San Simeon from here. He could take her that far and then decide what to do.

      While waiting for Althea and Robynn to return from the bathroom Jack absently looked over the kid’s placemat on which his daughter had been coloring so diligently. There were the usual animal drawings—puppies were a specialty of hers—and the cow pictures had been colored in mostly with green, which was her favorite color. Even more oddly, there was a crayon line that coursed diagonally across the paper, culminating in an arrow at the lower right corner. Jack studied this simple creation: the point of the arrow was surprisingly well drawn, small and fine, and looking more like the kind of mark a mechanical draftsman or architect would put alongside a measurement on a blueprint. How on earth did she manage that with the blunt end of a crayon? Perhaps she had genuine artistic talent. Since the clear implication of the arrow was that the sheet should be turned over, Jack obliged.

      Then he froze.

      A face stared back at him from the flipside of the menu. It was a woman’s face and nothing short of a crayon masterpiece: vibrant, alive, expressive, and disturbing. The waxen eyes, the brown color of which had somehow been created by overdrawing with primary colors, were riveted on his, refusing to move no matter how he changed the angle of his head or shifted around the paper. It was as though the face on the placemat was looking at him. There was a slight, sardonic smile on the face; a knowing smile.

      It was unmistakably the face from the mural.