by Piper Lennox
“Must have,” I smile. “My mom—um, Evelyn…she used to say I was more sugar than girl.”
Tillie smiles too, not at all bothered by the word choice. After all, we’re still learning the ropes here. We’re still strangers.
“So,” she says, folding her hands on the tabletop, “you found the letter, and...?”
“Oh, right,” I blink, getting back to the story. The last hour has been basic chitchat and getting to know each other, our trajectory all over the place. “It had your address in Crossbridge on it, so I went there, but...your tenant, he told me you’d been gone for months.”
“Shepherd is still there? I figured he’d move somewhere else when I didn’t come home. I told him I’d only be gone a month.” She raises her eyebrows and chuckles. “Then again, he’s got no reason to leave. Free house, no rent.”
I feel my brow furrow. “You told Shepherd you’d only be gone a month?”
“Well, I didn’t know Nick would…would have me stay—”
“No, I mean...you told him you were leaving?”
She nods. “In my note.”
“He said you didn’t leave a note.” My stomach hurts, a deep and searing nausea. Did he lie to me all along?
“Oh,” Tillie says, slumping. I know she’s only forty, but the lines around her mouth and eyes—at least, the one that isn’t swollen—make her look older. “I bet Nick had something to do with that. I wondered why he ran back inside.”
“Wait, wait.” I hold up my hand. “So you didn’t mean to be gone all this time? And this guy, he...took your note?”
“I don’t know that for sure,” she says, “but I wouldn’t put it past him.”
“I think you should start at the beginning. I’m having a really hard time following, here.”
“But you were telling me how you found me.”
I shake my head. “It’s not a big deal. I found the real estate listing in your room, so Shepherd gave me your car and...and I drove here. Okay, now you.”
She takes a breath. “I met Nick speed-dating. Which is a little embarrassing to admit, but…. Anyway, things got kind of serious with us, and then he told me was moving to Houston, for work. I mentioned wanting to see it someday, so he asked if I wanted to come along. You know, to help him get settled.”
I nod, following so far.
“He said he’d pay for me to fly back after a month, and we’d do long-distance.” She pauses, tracing the edge of the table with her finger. “But I decided to stay.”
Decided. The bruise snares my attention again. She must notice, because she brushes her hair back, hiding it with her hand until I look away.
“Do you want to be with him?” Like her, I whisper. “When he treats you like that?”
“It isn’t….”
“Don’t say, ‘It isn’t as bad as it looks.’ Because it looks like he hit you, and that pretty much says it all.”
“I was going to say, ‘It isn’t that easy.’ The house is rented in my name, because my credit is better than his. And…and he has my money.”
“All of it?”
Her eyes are wild now, darting around the diner like Nick will erupt from the floor, or appear in the streaked windows and drag her back. “I tried calling Shepherd from a payphone a few times, so he could wire me more, but the phone was disconnected.”
The smolder in my gut flares again. Granted, Shepherd had no idea this was going on—I hope—but with all his pawning, he couldn’t spring to keep her phone connected, just in case she called?
“He let you go shopping today, though, right?” I ask.
“Well, he…. We budget a little at a time for groceries.” Her brave face flickers back into place like a projection. “You aren’t seeing the whole story. Nick can be really sweet, and thoughtful….”
Oh, God, I think, my head ringing with sarcasm. There’s a twinge of shame in there, too: I used to say the same thing about Donnie.
“What’s his last name?” I ask, after the waitress delivers our food.
She busies herself by slathering whipped cream across her pancakes. “Lawson. Why?”
Nick Lawson. I commit it to memory. “Just curious.”
We eat with minimal conversation for a while. Tillie checks her watch, and her eyes move in a flurry around the diner again. “I should go soon.”
“Already?” Our food is barely a quarter finished. “I was hoping we could talk more.”
“Oh, we can. Maybe tomorrow evening, if you’ll still be in town?”
My vacation days go on a little longer, but I hadn’t planned on staying more than a day. I hadn’t planned beyond this point at all, actually, which was probably foolish. All my brain could handle was the task of finding her. I never summoned the energy to think ahead.
“I guess I can check back into my hotel for another night,” I answer, “but do we have to wait until tomorrow evening? That just eats up a lot of time we could use to hang out, you know?” I hope she can hear past the smooth turns of my voice and catch the real message: she might let Nick control our schedule, but I sure as hell won’t.
“Will ten not work for you? It’s just that I’ve got work tomorrow.”
I study her carefully. “You can’t work around it? Shepherd said you’re a freelance editor. Unless it’s a new job, which…I mean, if Nick’s controlling all your money, then how do you—”
“He doesn’t control it,” she protests, like she can reel in all the truth she’s let out so far. “But that’s okay, if tomorrow night doesn’t work for you. We could do the next day. Or maybe coffee tomorrow afternoon, if I finish early enough.”
Ah, this routine. I was good at this one, too, once upon a time: pretend the other person has their facts wrong, and provide reasonable, “everything is normal” alternatives that will never come to fruition.
“Tomorrow, then,” I repeat, and she nods, the painted look of domestic bliss sliding back into position. There’s just one thing it can’t cover, as we flag down our waitress for the check—that ringed swell beneath her eye, like a plum, rising to the surface. It makes my own eye ache so badly, just to look at it.
Sixteen
Lila
As promised, I wait for Tillie in the same place as yesterday. It’s ten, on the dot, but the street in front of my parking lights is as dead as it was ten minutes ago. Still, I keep waiting.
If Donnie were here, he’d bitch and moan until I gave up. “You’re waiting all night for someone you don’t even know,” he’d say, or something to that effect, and probably in a much more cruel, profane way.
“She’s my mom,” I would argue. “She’s the only blood I’ve got.”
And he would sneer, because Donnie never could see the value of loyalty. In his world of small-town hustles and backdoor deals, the only people worth helping, talking to, or even loving, were the ones who could give you something better in return.
When 10:20 ticks past, I bounce my head back against the headrest and close my eyes.
If Shepherd were here….
Oh, no: I’m not playing that game. It’s one thing to speculate about Donnie. It’s pure fantasy, because he never would have tagged along in the first place.
Shepherd did. He got my hopes up. Not just that something would happen between us, but that, no matter where this road led, I’d have him by my side when I reached the end. I shouldn’t have to wonder what he’d say. He should be here, right now, to say it in real life.
It’s 10:32. My eyes hone in on the corner where she should appear. When she doesn’t, I release the parking brake, nudge the gas, and crawl along until I’m on Cedar Court.
Her windows soften the darkness with a peach-colored glow. From this distance, a few yards at best, it looks like any other rancher. Any other life, suburban and typical.
I cut the engine and get out. The closer I get, the louder the noise inside seems. Not just to my ears, but to my nerves, and down to every last cell, a chill in my marrow I can’t ignore. I duck into the shadow of
the porch and wait.
Sure enough, when the storm in the living room subsides, a door slams in the back of the house, and the front one clicks open. The footsteps I hear are whisper-soft. Her hands fumble with her lighter; it drops and skitters across the wood, right between two railing spindles, and into my hand.
“Kathryn,” she gasps, when I hold it up.
“He’s got warrants, you know.”
Her face shifts in the light as she kneels, one hand resting on the slat beside mine. “What?”
I pull out my phone and show her the database for Crossbridge County, where two Nicholas Lawsons have four warrants between them. I swipe to the state database I bookmarked and show her the rest. “I don’t know which one he is, Nick M. or Nick B., but they’re all bad—domestic violence, sexual assault, failure to appear…that’s why he moved. And that’s why he had you rent this place in your name.”
She takes the phone and stares at it. The backlight shadows the bruise, making it look even bigger, and shows me a new one along her jaw. It’s faint, so it might even be old, hidden yesterday with makeup.
“He just said his credit was bad,” she whispers.
“He lied.” My volume is low, but my tone is razor-sharp. It has to be.
Granted, Donnie was a different class: psychological, getting in my head and under my skin. It wasn’t like Javier, who I left the very first time he dared grab my arm hard enough to bruise. Physical abuse became my benchmark, so Donnie’s mind games, infidelity, and psychological jabs were easy to miss.
But the type of abuse is just a formality: I still know what it’s like when you get that first person telling you to leave. If they aren’t firm, you won’t listen even a little. My only shot at getting Tillie out of here is this icy, commanding voice, even if it makes her wince.
“You should go,” she says, tears dancing on her bottom lashes. She lights her cigarette and stands, but doesn’t move away from the railing.
This is good. She’s listening.
“I’m not leaving until I know you’re safe.” I take my phone back and glance at the windows. They’re empty. “And right now, you definitely aren’t.”
“Kathryn,” she sighs, smoke rising with the sound. I wait for her excuse, but she swallows hard, instead, and stares at her feet.
“Leave with me.”
I rehearsed this all day. Show her the screenshots, tell her like it is, and get her to leave. Okay, so I thought we’d be in a diner or coffee shop right now, where she had some breathing room to make the decision, but it is what it is.
I’ve got a nuclear option, too: calling the cops on this asshole. There’s just one problem with that plan.
“I’m not sure what he’s capable of,” she says, echoing my thoughts.
That’s the drawback to any nuclear options: you risk way too much in collateral damage. If I call the cops on Nick with Tillie here, it’s pretty likely he’d hurt her, or worse.
Before I go that far, I want to know she’s safe. And if I can just get her off this porch, into my car, and a few miles away from him, she will be.
“He wouldn’t dare come after you in Indiana,” I assure her. “Not with this many warrants.” I reach up and find her hand on the railing. My fingers sift themselves into the spaces between hers. “We need to leave now, though.”
Her hand jerks back, like I’ve stung her. “Now?”
“Now.”
Tillie looks at the window. I see her chest shudder as she takes a breath.
“Ever since I gave you up,” she says softly, “I wondered if I’d ever meet you.”
She shuts her eyes. When she reopens them, they’re focused entirely on mine, her tears the same peachy color as the window.
“It’s…it’s surreal, finally getting that chance,” she says. “In a wonderful way. But now you’re asking me to come with you...and I’m learning all these things about Nick I should’ve known all along, but…”
Her sentence dissolves. I don’t have to hear the rest to know what it is. I’ve said those same words before, made the exact same excuse. “But I love him.”
It doesn’t matter how long the cons list is and how few pros there are; it doesn’t matter how badly they hurt you. When you love someone, or even think you do, you only see them through a special lens, a kaleidoscope that twists the truth into something prettier. Only when one final fact unfolds right in front of you, a total and inescapable bombshell, can you admit to yourself that love isn’t enough.
Like mother, like daughter, I guess.
I stare back at her. “If you were the one down here, and I was up there…what would you tell me to do?”
Tillie steps away from me, shaking her head. This is it; I’ve lost.
Then, her jaw sets.
It’s a look I know well. Dad always called it my “out of Lila’s way” face. I felt my jaw clench just like that so many times as a kid, determined to prove a teacher or some schoolyard bully wrong. I felt it the day I left Donnie, when he sat at the foot of our bed, still smelling like the girl I’d just chased away, and smirked, “What, you gonna leave?”
All this time, I thought it was a quirk of mine, nothing but a random ingredient in my personality. Now I wonder if it was programmed into me, all along.
“Okay,” Tillie whispers, as her spent cigarette goes spinning, end over end, into the shadows. “Let’s go.”
Seventeen
Shepherd
“Rock?”
My eyes flicker to the guy on my left. I pretend to study the street sign.
“Nah, man,” I mutter. Put your eyes back down. Flip through the apartment guide. Look busy.
He curses at me and shuffles off. I didn’t see him; I don’t even know if he was offering or asking. But it doesn’t matter, either way.
Don’t second-guess this. Austin is still a good choice—this is just a bad neighborhood. I know the depths of all cities are like this, everywhere. Suburbs, too. You can go anywhere in America and find anything, once you know to look.
The hard part is forgetting how. I wonder if people sense it, if they can see something rising off me like an aura, that makes me look like a good mark.
A long night in the bus station has my back twisted. While I walk, searching for the right street, my spine pops and cracks itself into position. This bag has less than five outfits in it, but feels like an entire closet, today.
The apartments I’ve dog-eared are all out of my budget, but cheap enough that I know younger people must live in those neighborhoods. It’s just a matter of finding someone in need of a roommate.
My eyes scan the buildings: older construction, not exactly attractive, but definitely affordable. The neighborhood has an up-and-coming feel to it, too, with bars and takeout dotting the lower levels. A bike lane, unfinished, looms along the sidewalk.
Sure enough, the first telephone pole is littered with flyers. I take tabs from every single roommate wanted sign and shuffle through them like a bad hand of poker, trying to find any matching street name while I walk.
“Lost?” a waitress asks, when I run right into the waist-high fencing of her restaurant. She’s wiping down two bistro tables on the sidewalk, smirking.
“Kind of. I’m looking for these.” I hand her my slips.
“Not this place,” she says dramatically, passing one back. “It’s had four fires in two months. Oh, and this one? Plumbing sucks. They were on the news about it, some kid’s toilet basically exploded. Shit everywhere. Can you even imagine? And this one’s okay, but I’ve been to parties there, and there’s no noise control at all.”
“I’m not picky. I just need a room, fast.”
She pops her gum and passes the rest of the slips back, pointing to the one she placed on top. “I know the guys who put this one up,” she says. “Charlie and Zeke. Nice guys, decent place. You want me to take you?”
“Oh, thanks, but….” I motion to the rag and sterilizer in her hands, the salt shaker perched precariously close to the edge of the
table. “I can find it.”
“My shift is over. I’m just cleaning this up, then I’m out. Wait up.” She breezes into the restaurant before I can decline again.
I lean against the fence and look around. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to have a local help me, since I have no idea where I am. And if she can get me a good word with these guys, so much the better.
“Okay,” she says, when she comes back, “follow me.”
The walk is short, according to her. Along the way, she pauses to shake out her hair from its bun, then lights a cigarette. She offers me one.
I’m tempted. My hand is already reaching for one, in fact. “Uh, thanks,” I say, pulling back, “but I quit.” I’d prefer to keep my stress smoking on the hotel curb a one-time mistake, if I can. This is a new city, my new life. I can start over here. I want to do it right.
“Where you moving from?” she asks, eyeing me as we cut through an alley. I grab her elbow to steer her away from a mud puddle. She smiles.
“Indiana.”
“And that’s all you brought?”
I look at my bag. Heavy as it feels, it looks pathetic: the fabric folds in on itself, revealing how empty it really is. “Yeah. All I needed to bring.”
“Well, hope you brought some cash, too,” she laughs, “because Zeke isn’t letting that room go without a deposit upfront.”
The girl seems nice. Innocent, like she wouldn’t harm a fly. But Jess was like that too—and it was true: she wouldn’t hurt a fly. Her sights were set on much bigger things.
“I can work something out with them, I guess,” I tell her. It’s better to be as aloof as possible, right now, until I know who I can trust.
Yet again, I think about Lila. That was a decent record: an entire hour without seeing her face in my head, without missing her, and without thinking about how much I trusted her, almost from the start.
When I got in the car with her, that felt like starting my life over. It was exciting. My stomach twisted, but in a good way. Right now, I feel like I’m fumbling along a dark wall for a light switch, unsure if I’m even in the right place.
