Chapter Eighteen
Amelia
Leaving Derby feels like stealing from a man who handed me the keys.
That is the thought I carry out of his house before dawn.
Not a suitcase. Not a clean conscience. Not courage.
Just that.
A theft.
His bedroom is behind me. His bed is still warm.
His body is still heavy with sleep, one arm stretched across the place where I was lying less than ten minutes ago.
His beard is mussed from my fingers. His mouth is soft in a way I never would have believed if I had not kissed every hard line out of it myself.
I should wake him.
I know I should.
Secrets turn into cages too.
The words beat against the inside of my skull with every careful step I take down the hall.
I should wake him, tell him about Lottie, Hot Mama, Lonerock, the Queens of Anarchy, and the road opening under my feet.
I should let him curse, argue, rage, throw on his cut, and follow because that is what Derby does.
He follows trouble until it either runs out of road or bleeds enough to satisfy him.
That is exactly why I don’t wake him.
Because if he comes with me now, he won’t come calm.
He will come fresh out of jail, full of Jeremy’s blood and unfinished violence, with that look in his eyes that says every problem in the world is a door he can kick in. He will come because he thinks protecting me means being near enough to put himself between me and whatever comes next.
And I want him near.
God help me, I want that so badly I almost turn around twice before I reach the living room.
The couch where he used to sleep looks strange in the dark.
The blanket is folded over one arm. His boots sit near the door.
The dinosaur courthouse still leans in the corner, Blue Rex presiding over a shoebox jail and a cereal-box witness stand.
A pack of dinosaur fruit snacks sits open on the coffee table.
The cheap little keychain I bought Derby is gone from the counter because he put it on his keys.
He kept it.
That is almost what breaks me.
Not the sex. Not the way he held me afterward. Not the rough tenderness in his voice when he told me to sleep.
The stupid keychain.
Proof that I gave him something small and silly, and he made room for it.
I press one hand to my mouth.
No sound.
No crying.
Not yet.
Lottie waits by the front door in boots, jeans, and a denim jacket over a black T-shirt that says Raise Hell, Eat Cornbread. Her hair is pulled back, showing nothing of the crown tattoo behind her ear, but I know it’s there now.
I can’t stop knowing.
She has my bag in one hand and August’s dinosaur backpack in the other.
Her face ain’t soft.
Good.
Soft would ruin me.
“You ready?” she whispers.
No.
“Yes.”
She looks toward the hallway. “Phone?”
I glance at the kitchen counter.
My phone sits beside Derby’s empty coffee mug, turned off, dead as a confession I can’t make.
“I left it.”
“Good.”
“It feels wrong.”
“It’s wrong.”
My eyes snap to hers.
Lottie shrugs. “Don’t mean it ain’t necessary.”
That is the worst kind of comfort because it doesn’t pretend to be comfort at all.
She pulls a small black burner phone from her pocket and presses it into my hand. “Wildcat set this up.”
I stare at it. “Wildcat knows?”
“Wildcat knows how to make a phone that don’t sing to the wrong people. He doesn’t know the whole opera.”
“Does Legend know?”
“No. But remember, he said you being here was up to you.”
“Derby?”
Her eyes sharpen. “If Derby knew, you wouldn’t be standing here. You’d be in a fight you might lose because part of you wants to.”
My throat tightens.
I hate her a little for being right.
August makes a sleepy sound from the hallway.
I turn.
He stands in the bedroom doorway wearing dinosaur pajamas, hair wild, Blue Rex tucked under his arm. Janie is behind him with our other bag, her face pale and sad in the low light. She must have woken him gently.
Or maybe children feel leaving before anyone says the word.
“Mama?” August whispers.
I kneel so fast my knees hit the floor.
He comes to me, warm and limp with sleep. I wrap my arms around him and bury my face in his hair.
“We’re going on a trip,” I whisper.
His body stiffens. “Now?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The hardest question.
The simplest word.
I pull back and look at his little face. “Because there is a place where we can be safer for a little while.”
“Derby’s house is safe.”
My heart cracks.
“I know.”
“Then why?”
Lottie looks away.
Janie’s eyes fill.
I hold August’s shoulders and tell him the closest thing to truth I can give a five-year-old. “Because sometimes safe needs help.”
He frowns. “Is Derby coming?”
There it is.
The question I knew was coming.
It still hits like a fist.
My mouth opens.
Nothing comes.
Images flash too fast to catch. Derby on the couch. Derby on his knees fixing a blanket fort. Derby putting keys in my hand. Derby telling August that part ain’t fake. Derby asleep in bed, trusting me to come back.
“Not yet,” I whisper.
August’s eyes fill immediately. “Is he still sleeping?”
“Yes.”
“Can I tell him bye?”
I nearly make a sound.
No.
No, because if August touches Derby, Derby wakes.
If Derby wakes, I stay.
If I stay, Jeremy keeps reaching, and Derby keeps answering with his fists until one day he doesn’t come home from jail or Jeremy doesn’t come home at all.
Lottie steps closer. “Sugar, Derby needs sleep. Jail makes men cranky as wet possums.”
August looks at her like he isn’t buying it, which proves he has some sense.
“I want to tell him.”
“I know,” I say.
“Will he be mad?”
At me, yes.
At you, never.
“No,” I lie.
August’s lower lip trembles. “He said he doesn’t fake like me.”
That breaks me.
A tear slips down before I can stop it.
I pull him into me and hold on. “He doesn’t.”
“Then why isn’t he coming?”
Because your mother is a coward.
Because your mother is brave.
Because sometimes those are the same thing in different lighting.
“Because this part is for us first,” I whisper. “Me and you. Then we figure out the rest.”
August doesn’t understand.
Good.
Bad.
I don’t know anymore.
Lottie’s voice cuts through the room, low and firm. “You can feel guilty in Oregon. Right now, you get in the damn car.”
Janie chokes on a laugh and a sob at the same time.
I look at Lottie. “Language.”
She points at me. “Honey, if that boy ain’t learned damn from Derby by now, I’ll buy him a scholarship.”
August sniffles. “I know damn.”
“Of course you do,” Lottie says.
I almost laugh.
It comes out broken.
Janie presses a bag into Lottie’s hand. “Snacks. Socks. Wipes. Coloring books. Two juice boxes. Don’t let Lottie give him gas station nachos before noon.”
Lottie looks offended. “Nachos are road cuisine.”
“They are a digestive crime,” Janie says.
“Roads require crime.”
August clutches Blue Rex tighter. “Can we bring dinosaur court?”
Lottie nods toward the backpack. “Packed the judge. The rest of the courthouse was structurally unsound.”
“That’s what Derby said.”
“I know. It pained me to agree with him.”
I look back one last time.
Down the hall.
At Derby’s cracked bedroom door.
I can’t see him from here. Only the shadowed gap, the dark beyond it, the place where I left him sleeping in the belief that I would come back from the bathroom.
My chest folds in on itself.
Leaving Jeremy felt like dragging myself out of a grave.
Leaving Derby feels like walking out of warmth into a storm because I’m afraid my fire will burn him down.
I press my lips together.
No sound.
No crying.
Not until the car moves.
We leave through the front door.
The air outside is cold and gray, dawn not yet committed to being morning. Lottie’s SUV waits in the drive with the headlights off. My truck stays parked near the garage, keys on the kitchen counter beside my phone. I don’t take it. A truck can be recognized. Followed. Seen.
Lottie says the SUV is cleaner. Different plates. No trackers. Full tank.
She says this like women fleeing men should have a checklist and she has done it enough times to laminate one.
Maybe she has.
That thought makes my skin prickle.
August climbs into the back with sleepy confusion and a backpack full of dinosaurs. Lottie buckles him in like she has done this before. She gives Blue Rex a seat belt made from the middle strap.
“Judge needs restraint,” she says.
August nods solemnly. “He bites criminals.”
“Smart judge.”
I stand beside the open passenger door, frozen.
The house is right there.
Derby is right there.
All I have to do is turn around.
Lottie walks around the hood and stops in front of me.
“No shame in changing your mind,” she says.
I laugh softly. “You said we had to go.”
“I said you had to decide. I ain’t Jeremy. I ain’t Derby. I ain’t Legend. I’m not putting you in a car with your own yes gagged.”
My eyes sting all over again.
Choice.
Always choice.
Why does it feel like a knife every time someone gives it to me?
“If I stay,” I whisper, “he will go after Jeremy again.”
“Probably.”
“If I leave, he will think I ran from him.”
“Probably.”
“That isn’t helpful.”
“Truth rarely is, but at least it don’t wear cologne.”
A broken laugh slips out.
Then I look at the house one more time.
“I’m saving him,” I say.
Lottie’s face does something complicated. “Maybe.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I believe you need to believe that.”
That cuts too close.
I get in the car.
Lottie closes my door before I can escape my own decision.
A second later, she slides behind the wheel, starts the engine, and backs out without headlights until we reach the curve of the drive. The house slips away in the mirror, porch dim, windows still, Derby asleep inside.
I watch until trees swallow it.
Then the first sob comes.
Silent.
Ugly.
Lottie says nothing.
Bless her.
August is quiet in the back, either asleep again or pretending because he knows grown-up pain is too big for him this early.
We hit the main road as the sky begins to lighten.