Chapter 18
Rachel ran the property twice, calling Sophie’s name until her throat burned. She checked the barn, garage, tree line, and drainage ditch. Each empty place made her move faster, and by the time she reached the neighbors’ porch, she no longer sounded calm.
“Sophie. Sophie,” Rachel shouted.
The older couple’s bedroom light came on, a candle, and the husband appeared at the door in a robe with the shotgun in one hand. His wife stood behind him, her hair loose around her shoulders and her face sharp with alarm.
“What happened?” the husband asked.
“She’s gone. Sophie’s gone. Her backpack is gone, too, along with some food from our supplies. I woke up, and her room was empty,” Rachel said.
“I heard footsteps about twenty minutes before first light. Gravel on the road, heading west. I thought it was another traveler passing through.”
Sophie had gone west, not toward Millerton, where her aunt had gone, and not back up the lane to the farmhouse.
She had headed for the road they’d walked in on and the highway beyond it.
Rachel ran to the road and found disturbed grass where it met the gravel shoulder.
Dew had been brushed aside in a narrow path, and one small set of scuffed tracks headed west. Rachel shouldered her pack without closing it and started walking.
Dawn had begun to gray the tree line. She passed a man with a duffel bag and a woman pushing a bicycle, then asked both the same question.
“Have you seen a thirteen-year-old girl with blond hair and gray-green eyes? She’s carrying a backpack and would have passed this way within the last hour,” Rachel asked.
The man shook his head. The woman on the bicycle thought for a moment, then pointed west.
“There was a girl at the crossroads back there. Sitting on the guardrail. I passed her maybe forty minutes ago. She was facing west, like she was deciding whether to keep going,” the woman said.
Rachel thanked her and pushed faster. Her pack bounced against her shoulders, but she didn’t stop to adjust it.
The crossroads appeared a mile later, where the gravel road met a paved county route.
Rachel checked both directions, saw nothing, and was about to continue west when she noticed the produce stand.
It was smaller than the stand where they’d spent the first night, with a roof on four wooden posts and a counter across the front.
Empty crates sat beneath it. Sophie was on the ground behind the counter with her backpack in her lap.
She wasn’t hiding. She was waiting. She looked up when Rachel reached the gravel.
Her face was pale and dirty, and her eyes were red-rimmed.
She stayed on the ground with her backpack clutched to her stomach.
“You broke your promise. You said you wouldn’t leave me with strangers. Then you asked those people to find someone to take me. That’s the same thing. You were already planning to get rid of me,” Sophie said.
Rachel started answering in office language about temporary arrangements and safe adults. The words died before she spoke them because Sophie would hear the deflection beneath them.
“I was gathering options, not making a decision,” Rachel said.
“There’s no difference. You asked because you were considering it,” Sophie said.
Rachel set her pack down and sat on the gravel facing Sophie. Three feet separated them, and it felt wider than any mile they’d walked. Birds called from the trees as the morning turned pale gray.
“I don’t know if Hannah and Caleb are alive.
I don’t know if your aunt and uncle are coming back.
I don’t know if either of us will survive what happens next.
Those are the true things, Sophie. I can’t promise safety because I don’t know what that means anymore.
I can’t promise a family waiting at the end of this road because I don’t know if mine is still there, and I don’t know if yours is coming back,” Rachel said.
Sophie’s mouth tightened. Her fingers curled around the strap of her backpack, and the knuckles went white with the pressure.
“There’s one thing I can promise. I won’t abandon you, not to strangers, not to a roadside, and not because the walking gets hard, or the food runs out. That promise stands. Everything else is a question I don’t have the answer to yet,” Rachel said.
Sophie’s breathing steadied, and the hard line of her mouth softened into uncertainty. She studied Rachel the way she studied every adult, weighing promises against proof.
“Your feet are going to get worse if we keep walking,” Sophie said.
“I know,” Rachel replied.
“So are mine.”
“I know that, too.”
Sophie nodded, stood slowly, winced when her right foot took her weight, and adjusted her backpack straps.
They walked back to the farmhouse together.
Rachel wrote a note on the back of the aunt’s message, explaining where they were going and why, then taped it inside the shed door.
She packed the water, enough canned food to start west, the compass, and the map.
At the road, she turned west toward Brenton, Hannah, and Caleb.
Two hundred miles stretched ahead through whatever the world had become.
Sophie stood beside her at the gravel driveway.
She looked once at the farmhouse, then faced west. She tightened her backpack straps and took the first step without being asked.
Rachel followed. The road stretched ahead of them, empty and quiet in the early light, and for the first time since the highway, going in the wrong direction felt like the only right choice left.