Chapter Three
Katy
I woke before the light.
The room was cold. Not the sharp, shocking cold of the truck’s AC, but something deeper -- the accumulated chill of a space that had been running empty for days.
I lay on my back under the thin blanket and listened to the air conditioner kick on, a low mechanical hum that vibrated through the wall behind the headboard.
My arms were bare. I’d slept in a T-shirt and the shorts I’d been wearing on the highway, too tired to dig through the duffel for anything else.
My body knew before my brain did. Shoulders tight.
Breath held. Ears tuned to the frequency of footsteps, raised voices, that specific creak of a door handle turning.
The room gave me nothing. Just the hum of the AC and, somewhere beyond the window, the distant bark of a dog. Single bark. No urgency in it.
I sat up. The mattress springs complained under me, an unfamiliar sound from an unfamiliar bed.
The clock on the nightstand read 5:47. Early.
Ellie wouldn’t stir for another hour at least. She’d always been a heavy sleeper, even as a baby -- deep, trusting sleep, the sleep children give themselves when they believe the world is arranged for their protection.
I envied that. I’d forgotten how to sleep like that somewhere around year three of motherhood.
I moved to the window. The curtain was heavy cotton, thick enough to block light completely when closed. I parted it with two fingers, just enough to see through, and felt the cool glass against my knuckles.
Outside, the chain-link gate stood open.
Not ajar -- fully open, the metal frame rolled back on its track like a door left welcoming.
Beyond it, the compound road wound between houses I hadn’t properly seen yesterday, just glimpses from Dread’s truck window.
In the thin morning light, they looked ordinary.
Porches with rockers. Flower beds. A tricycle tipped on its side in someone’s driveway.
A woman crossed the lane from one of the houses, carrying a watering can.
She wore a housedress -- an actual housedress, pale blue with small flowers, like the ones my grandmother used to wear -- and her dark hair was pulled back in a loose knot.
No hurry in her movements. She bent to water a pot of geraniums on her porch steps, the can tipping slow and even, water pooling in the soil and soaking down without a sound.
Behind her, two kids burst out of the house next door.
Boys, maybe eight or nine, already in shorts and bare feet, already running.
They hit the grass between the townhomes at a sprint, one chasing the other, both of them shrieking with laughter that carried clean through the glass.
No adult followed them. No one called them back or told them to be careful or keep it down.
They just ran, full-tilt, with the total certainty of kids who know the ground beneath them belongs to people who love them.
I watched them until my fingers went numb against the cold glass. Then I let the curtain fall.
The kitchen was small. Galley style, counter on one side, appliances on the other, just enough room for one person to move without bumping elbows.
I found the coffeemaker on the counter by the sink.
Someone had already set it up -- filter in the basket, grounds measured and waiting, the carafe clean and positioned under the drip.
I filled the reservoir from the tap and pressed the button.
The machine gurgled to life, water heating, the first drops hitting the carafe with a sound so ordinary it made my chest hurt.
I stood with my arms crossed while it brewed. One foot braced against the cabinet door. Jaw tight, then loosening by degrees as the smell filled the kitchen -- rich, dark, nothing like the gas station coffee I’d been drinking for the past week. My shoulders dropped an inch. Then another.
Ellie found me there twenty minutes later.
She shuffled out of the bedroom in her socks, hair wild on one side, the hem of her nightgown brushing her ankles.
She didn’t speak. Just padded to the refrigerator and stood in front of it with her hand on the handle, looking up at me with the patient certainty of a child who knows exactly what she wants and is waiting for permission to take it.
“Juice?” I asked.
She nodded.
I opened the door, found a small carton of apple juice on the top shelf, and handed it to her. She took it with both hands, carefully -- she handled everything that way, as if the world’s objects were delicate and might break if gripped too hard.
The sliding glass door in the living room caught her attention next.
She pressed her nose against it, juice carton clutched to her chest, and stared out at the yard.
The two boys were still there, joined now by a girl with braids who sat cross-legged in the grass examining whatever was cupped in her palms. Ellie’s free hand came up and flattened against the glass.
She didn’t move. Didn’t ask. Just watched, perfectly still, with the same reverence she gave animals at the zoo -- something that bordered on grief.
I set my coffee mug on the counter. The ceramic made a soft click against the laminate.
“You can go out if you want.”
She turned. Not fast -- slow, deliberate, her gaze finding mine with the sharp focus she reserved for moments when the world offered something too good to trust. Checking. Always checking. Her chin lifted a fraction, the question forming without words.
I nodded. “Get dressed first.” She disappeared into the bedroom and came back ninety seconds later in shorts and a T-shirt.
Soon she was at the door, fumbling with the lock, her small fingers working the latch with a concentration that made my throat tight.
The door slid open. Morning air rushed in, warm and carrying the smell of cut grass, and Ellie stepped onto the concrete stoop in her bare feet and stood there for one suspended second, poised between the threshold and the yard, between the world I’d built for her and the one waiting beyond the glass.
Then she was running.
I followed her out. Not running -- walking, one hand on the doorframe, the other wrapped around my coffee mug.
The concrete stoop was warm under my bare feet, still holding yesterday’s heat, and I planted myself there with my shoulders against the siding and watched Ellie cross the narrow strip of grass between the townhome and the yard.
In unfamiliar territory she always moved slowly, measured, each step placed with the care of someone testing ice.
The three children had noticed her. The girl with braids looked up from whatever she was holding, and one of the boys stopped mid-run and turned.
Ellie halted ten feet from them, hands at her sides, and waited.
I held my breath. Didn’t call out. Didn’t wave her forward or back. Just watched, coffee cooling between my palms, while the yard held its collective breath with me.
The girl with braids stood up. Said something I couldn’t hear. Ellie’s shoulders dropped a fraction. Then the girl extended her cupped hands, and Ellie stepped forward to look, and just like that, the distance between them collapsed into nothing.
I exhaled. My coffee had gone lukewarm.
The woman came down the lane from the direction of the clubhouse while I was still standing there.
She carried a covered dish in both hands, a dish towel draped over the top, and her dark hair was pinned back in a loose twist that had started coming undone at the temples.
No makeup. No jewelry except a thin silver chain at her throat.
She walked like someone who knew exactly where she was going and had all the time in the world to get there.
“Morning,” she said, and set the dish on the porch rail beside me before I could protest, close enough that the warmth reached me anyway. The smell hit me a second later -- butter, flour, something sweet underneath. Biscuits. Still warm from the oven.
“I’m Kitty.” No hand extended. No expectation of a handshake. She just leaned against the porch railing and crossed her arms, settling onto one hip like she’d carved that notch in the wood herself and was happy to occupy it. “Fox mentioned you’d arrived. Said your girl’s name is Ellie.”
I nodded. “Katy.”
“Hot one today.” She tipped her face toward the sky, squinting. “Supposed to hit ninety-five by noon. Garden’s going to need watering twice.” She glanced toward the clubhouse. “I help out around here sometimes. Been friends with some of these idiots for years.”
I glanced at her. “You’re not…”
“With one of them?” She laughed. “God, no. Although I had a thing for Knox once upon a time. Thankfully, I recovered.”
Something about the way she said it made me smile.
“Anyway, Fox mentioned you and Ellie were here, and I figured you could use breakfast.”
I blinked. The words had arrived in a single breath, effortless. Information released with an ease I didn’t ever remember having.
“Dog keeps digging under the east fence,” she continued. “Somebody’s lab mix. My money’s on one of the Prospects’ boys, though the kid swears it’s not him. Dog’s smart, I’ll give him that. Dug the hole where the cameras don’t quite reach. Little bastard.”
A laugh escaped me before I could catch it. Small, startled, more breath than sound. Kitty’s mouth curved at one corner, pleased. I’d not met the Prospects, but I’d caught bits and pieces of conversations from people passing the townhouse that led me to believe they had some new ones.