5. Willa
FIVE
Willa
It was the first night that I’d ever had to myself.
Strange…I know. But that was the thing, the whole reason I’d left home and run away, not sure what would even be out there.
The only thing I knew was that I would actually be able to breathe…
be able to think. Make my own choices, not just lie there in my twin bed in a room with three other women older than me…
lie there in dread of if Mr. Daley would pick me to sleep in his room that night.
I hadn’t grown up on the Daley homestead—but not that far off from it, either. My papa was another believer, raised his girls to be good and be quiet and to obey. I’d spent my entire life living one day at a time—you just have to get through today, Willa.
And I think…I’d thought that maybe it would be better when I had a baby. That maybe Mr. Daley would leave me alone.
I’d held out for four years.
The baby never came.
And now…now I was here. Deciding what to do with my own time for the first night of my life.
Wondering when it would end.
Deciding to just get through today.
Forrest left me to my own devices for the most part, and at first, that was strange.
I sat in my room not sure what to do for about thirty minutes.
It was tidy, comfortable…quiet. Every so often I could hear the goats outside, or the bray of a horse somewhere else on the property, the low of cattle.
It was too hot to crack the window, though I was sorely tempted if only for the sake of hearing the creek.
Eventually, I found the courage to actually go through the bag Haven had brought for me.
Inside, there were all kinds of clothes—none like I’d grown up wearing, but all kinds anyway. Dresses, if that’s what I wanted…big, baggy t-shirts, a couple pretty blouses, jeans, sweatpants. A set of matching pajamas with white flowers on blue cotton.
I pulled out the pajamas and ran my fingers over them…soft with use, the tag worn so thin that you couldn’t read it anymore.
And there were other things. A toothbrush. A comb. A hairclip. A bottle of shampoo, another of conditioner, and bubble bath…which made me want to take a bath right away, because I hadn’t missed the clawfoot tub in the bathroom.
Snacks. Some chocolates.
And then there were the books.
I pulled out the small stack and sorted through them…on the top, Anne of Green Gables. In the middle, something called Untamed?
And the most scandalous of all, something that I’m sure would have sent me running back home if I’d fled from the Daley homestead even a week earlier—a romance.
I could tell from even one look at the cover—a muscular man, shirtless, holding a swooning woman in a ballgown, the sleeve pulled down off one of her shoulders. I actually gasped when I saw it, then I laughed at myself…then I looked closer.
Opened the front cover.
Read the first page.
There was nothing lurid on the first page, at least. I don’t know why—I’d imagined it would be filthy from word one, that I’d immediately see the word penis and slam it shut.
Nope. Nothing like that.
I shut it again and chewed on my lip.
Looked at the bubble bath…looked at the PJs.
Wondered if I was brave enough to ask Forrest if it would be strange for me to have a bath and read a little. If that would be imposing. If—
No. Willa, no—you had the courage to run away, you absolutely have the courage to tell the nice man you’re staying with that you would like to have a bath.
I picked up the bubble bath and the pajamas and the romance novel and I stood up before I could talk myself back out of it.
I unlocked the deadbolt, then I strode out into the hall like a woman on a mission.
The cottage was quiet, but I could just barely hear the scratching of a pencil on paper.
I followed the sound to the kitchen, where I found Forrest hunched over the table with a bunch of papers spread out in front of him, reading glasses pushed up into his curly black hair.
Nickel was under his chair; she lifted her head when I came in, thumped her tail once, then put it back down.
Forrest looked up, eyes widening slightly. “Hey,” he said. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m—” I held the things against my chest. “I was going to—I wanted to—” I stopped. Tried again. “I’m going to have a bath…if that’s okay.”
He looked at me for a second.
“You don’t have to ask,” he said. “Bathroom’s all yours.”
“I know,” I lied. I didn’t know. No one had ever just…given me permission to do whatever I wanted. “I just—I didn’t want to use your hot water without asking.”
“Use whatever you want,” he shrugged. “There are towels in the cabinet under the sink. The hot tap runs slow, but it heats up fast—so give it a minute, then just be careful to get it right.”
“Okay.”
“There’s also—” He pushed back from the table and went to the cabinet above the refrigerator, then came back with a small speaker. “If you want music. It connects automatically.”
I frowned. “I um…I don’t have a phone—”
He winced. “Shit, of course. Uh…there’s radio on it too. You just—” He pushed a button and the speaker came to life, an ad playing with a slight crackle every so often. “Change the station if you want, we pretty much only get oldies, country, or top 40 out here.”
“As long as it’s not worship music,” I said with an awkward smile.
He chuckled. “Noted. No worship music.” Then he turned around to go back to the table. “Just…holler if you need anything.”
I stood there for one more second. He’d already looked back at his papers—not dismissing me, but giving me an easy out rather than watching me stand in his kitchen while I tried to learn how to be a person.
I went back down the hall.
Ran the bath.
Poured in enough bubble bath that the foam came up to the rim…then I stood there and watched the bubbles climb and pop.
I got in.
The water was hot enough to make me hiss and then sink…
and I lay there with the steam rising and some country singer coming through the speaker on the edge of the sink.
I just lay there and thought. Wondered if they were going to come looking for me.
Wondered if they even cared. Wondered if the other girls were okay, hoping they hadn’t been punished in my stead.
No one had helped me. They would have told if they knew what I planned.
Which was why I hadn’t told them.
Eventually, my thoughts got scary enough that I whipped my hand out to grab the book…and immediately felt guilty over the fact that I splashed water all over it. Much to my relief, it seemed the book had already met a bathtub; the pages were a little warped, ink smeared on a page or two.
It was only then that I stopped thinking.
Stopped reading.
Let myself fall into the story, into another world where the girl actually loved the man she married…
And the man in that book? I didn’t want to admit it, knew it was wrong…
…but he looked like Forrest Holt.