"How fast are you going?"
"Fifty-five." He was going fifty-two. The car ran cooler at fifty-two.
Josie closed one eye and moved her lips. She was good at numbers. Her teacher at the consolidated school in Atlantic had written on her last report card, *Josephine is a careful thinker who notices everything*, and Walt had read it twice and put it on the refrigerator under the magnet shaped like an ear of corn, and then he had taken it off the refrigerator and put it in the box with Josie's books, because the refrigerator had been sold.
"That's fifteen hours," she said. "Almost."
"Close enough."
"We have to sleep somewhere."
"We'll sleep somewhere."
"And eat somewhere."
"We will."
"You have to eat too," she said. "Daddy said."
He looked at her then. She was looking at the road. She had Jimmy's chin and Marian's eyebrows, which went up in the middle when she was worried, so that she looked like a small surprised owl. Her mother, Pam, had left two springs ago for Kansas City with a man who sold siding, and had sent one postcard since, and Josie did not talk about her. Jimmy had gone west in August when the last of the credit ran out and the bank's letters started coming certified. There was work in the trona mines outside Green River and on the drilling rigs, men from all over the Midwest going, farmers' sons, the ones whose fathers' land was going under the gavel one county at a time. *I'll send for you both,* Jimmy had said, standing in the yard with his duffel, and he had, and here they were.
"When did your daddy say that?"
"On the phone. When you were outside. He said, 'Make sure Grandpa eats, he forgets.'"
"I don't forget."
"Then why didn't you eat any of the grilled cheese?"
"Because it was yours."