She nodded.
“Okay, go ahead and buy a ticket now. Once you get to a big station, you can head anywhere from there. I’m told there should be three hundred dollars on the debit card, so keep track of that.”
Lily scanned the dark road as they drove, but she didn’t spy any cars, and then they were on the highway, heading into the brief, black lull of isolation between this town and the next. Buses parked at the big truck stop there for a meal break.
The young woman next to her put off waves of fear that ratcheted Lily’s own muscles into a tight ache. Amber kept looking back at the road behind them, though Lily wasn’t sure if she was watching for cars or saying goodbye to Herriman. Whichever it was, she was sure they might both explode with tension before they made it past the wheat fields to the faint glow on the horizon beyond. The fear and uncertainty, the haunting terror of an utterly unknown future . . . Lily hadn’t faced what Amber was facing, but she’d dealt with that sick feeling of losing the ground beneath her and fearing she might lose her grip on her own child.
She’d come to this town hoping she might re-create her own childhood, even hoping she might re-create some family. But her stepmother had looked right through her whenever they’d crossed paths, and she’d only seen her teenaged half brothers from a distance. With her father dead, no one was interested in bringing Lily into the fold, not even when she’d desperately needed help.
But Amber wasn’t just alone. She was running for her life.
When they finally emerged from the darkness into the first sprawl of lights and houses, Lily glanced over to see a glint of silent tears on pale skin. “Amber?” she said gently. “Are you okay?”
She shook her head first; then she nodded, but she didn’t say a word; she only took a band from her pocket, pulled her blond hair into a low ponytail, and tugged up the hood of her sweatshirt to hide as much of herself as she could.
“You ordered the ticket just fine?”
“Yeah.”
Lily reached past her to pop open the glove compartment and withdraw a travel pack of tissues. “Take these.”
That surprised a watery laugh from the woman. “Thanks. I guess I’ll need them.”
Lily wanted to ask a hundred more questions as the giant sign illuminated with food-court choices finally peeked up in the distance. Do you have family? What’s your plan? How will you take care of your baby? Will you really stay gone? But she asked nothing even as she pulled into the huge, glaringly lit parking lot.
“Can I . . . ?” The woman swallowed hard. “Can I wait here in the car? Until the bus arrives?”
“Sure.” Lily didn’t pick up her phone, but she wanted to. Everett was fine. If he woke up and looked for her, he’d call. But when was the last time he’d searched her out in the middle of the night? Maybe a year ago after a nightmare? Two years?
He’d had so many at first. He’d cried for his dad, who’d been such a force of nature and charisma when he wasn’t caught up in work.
Work. She almost laughed at the idea as she pulled into the dimmest spot she could find. Jones had been working on lining his own pockets and not much else.
Just as Lily reached to turn off the ignition, the sleek silver bus turned into the lot, brakes hissing in protest as it slowed. The woman beside her opened her door almost immediately, clutching her backpack tight to her distended belly as she swung her legs out. “Thank you” was all she said before she stood and slammed the door. The bus door accordioned open, people poured out to flock toward the bright-white glare of the station, and Amber rushed across the cement to climb the steps as soon as the doorway cleared. No shopping for snacks, no last-minute bathroom break; she desperately wanted to be gone.
Lily sighed with her own relief at escaping all this trouble. It was over, and she wouldn’t do it again. She hadn’t ever had the right motivation, anyway. Of course she’d wanted to help women in trouble. Who wouldn’t? But she’d also wanted to convince herself she hadn’t lost all her daring and guts in the past six years.
She pulled away from the station, away from the frantic waves pouring off Amber, and away from the lights of civilization. It didn’t feel like escaping, though. It felt like being swallowed by a deep, dark mouth.
Amber’s fear had left Lily feeling vulnerable and restless. She needed to reach out to someone, so she dialed Zoey. The screaming volume of the phone blasted over her car speakers, and Lily winced, but she didn’t turn it down. She was still connected to the world, even if she felt entirely alone as she moved farther into the night.
“Lily?” Zoey answered. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine. I’m done. She . . . I mean, I’m heading home.”
“That’s good. It’s great, actually. Thank you so much.”
“Zoey . . .” She hesitated, pride warring with fear. Zoey was so brave and so indefatigable, and Lily was just . . . scared. Hiding like a wounded animal. But she was wounded, and she had a son to protect. “Zoey, I can’t do that again. I can’t put my job at risk.”
Her best friend was silent for a moment, and Lily wondered if she was nodding or frowning or rolling her eyes. After all, Zoey put her actual life on the line helping people every day, and she sometimes got exasperated with Lily’s refusal to open her life back up. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” she’d said so many times. “Get your chin up, girl!”
“I get it,” she finally responded. “I’m so sorry if I asked for too much.”
“No, it’s not that. I volunteered. Everything just felt intense this time. I got spooked. That’s all.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Lily said. And she was. She relaxed a little into her seat. “Things are normal. Everett is going to explode if he doesn’t get a phone, my class is boring but I’m pulling an A, and my love life is still nonexistent. How about you?”
Zoey chuckled, and the warm, raspy sound melted even more of Lily’s tension. “Omar’s new foster puppies are finally sleeping through the night, so I feel like Superwoman these days.”
“Congratulations! Are you still up for a cup of coffee sometime this week?”
“I’m always up for a cup of coffee.”
When they disconnected Lily felt like herself again. Tired, yes, but the normal kind of tired she always felt.
Zoey had been the first friend she’d made when she’d moved to Herriman as a little girl, and she’d been her first friend when Lily had moved back as a married woman with a tiny baby. After the police raid, Jones hadn’t been there to face the consequences, so everyone had turned on Lily. Everyone except Zoey. She knew way too much about bad husbands from running the shelter, and she understood that Lily had been another victim of Jones’s crimes.
She was amazing, and Lily wasn’t, and she couldn’t try to keep up with her friend’s bravery. She’d get back to living a safe, quiet life and keeping her damn head down, down, down.
If Everett had seen anything, it would be nothing but a curiosity now. Things were back under control, and she could keep her life in order while she figured out how to navigate the next few years.
“One more year,” she whispered to herself, pleased at the way the number had decreased to almost zero. One year and finally the foreclosure would fall off her report, she’d have her accounting degree, and she could get a better job, buy a house, and move to a real neighborhood. The bankruptcy would hang around a bit longer, but she’d have seven years of paid bills and decent credit to offset that. She could get Everett out of this town and out of this lonely apartment.