Chapter Twenty #3
Hot Mama smiles slowly. “Baby, you told a biker not to follow. That’s like telling rain not to get wet.”
My chest aches.
“What happens when he gets here?”
“Depends,” Hot Mama says.
“On what?”
“Whether he comes to fetch you or hear you.”
The difference sits between us.
I hope Derby knows it.
I hope I do.
A bell rings outside, loud and bright.
“Chili,” Tansy says, closing her notebook. “Kids eat first, and if you get between them and cornbread, Shortie makes you weed the meditation garden.”
Maribel lifts the baby. “Again?”
Tansy points at her. “That was one time, and the toddler bit me.”
We head back outside, and the campground has shifted into evening.
The sky is purple-gray. Smoke curls from the fire circle.
Women move with practiced ease, setting out bowls, spoons, bread, pitchers of tea and water.
Kids line up first, messy and loud and watched by every adult on the property.
August spots me and waves so hard his whole arm moves.
“Mama! They have chili!”
“I see that.”
“And Princess Chomp has a jail too!”
The girl with purple boots holds up the green dinosaur. “She escaped.”
August looks delighted. “We need a bigger court.”
Hot Mama leans down beside him. “You August?”
He goes quiet at once, staring up at her.
She smiles.
He clutches Blue Rex.
I start to step forward, but Lottie catches my wrist.
Wait.
Hot Mama holds out one red-nailed hand to Blue Rex. “Your mama says you’re a judge.”
August looks at me.
I nod.
He lifts Blue Rex slightly. “He is.”
“Good. We need fair judges around here. Some of these women cheat at cards.”
“Cheating is bad.”
“Depends who you’re cheating.”
August considers that.
I sigh. “Hot Mama.”
She laughs. “Fine. We’ll corrupt him slowly.”
August smiles.
Then the girl with purple boots grabs his sleeve. “Come on. Kids eat first.”
He goes.
Just like that.
A little piece of him runs into the noise, into the line, into a place where he isn’t strange for being scared and not special for having run.
I stand there, watching him receive a bowl before any adult touches food.
Kids eat first.
Rule three.
Something inside me loosens.
Hot Mama comes to stand beside me.
“He’ll sleep hard tonight,” she says.
“He hasn’t had other kids in a while.”
“Bad men shrink a child’s world. We stretch it back out.”
I look at her.
She says things like Lottie. Like knives wrapped in quilts.
“How long can we stay?” I ask.
“As long as you need. Not as long as you can hide.”
I frown. “What does that mean?”
“Means this ain’t a place to rot pretty. You rest. You eat. You cry. You get your feet under you. Then you decide what kind of woman walks out.”
“And if I don’t know?”
“That’s why we straighten crowns.”
My hand goes unconsciously to the skin behind my ear as I remember Lottie’s crown tattoo.
Hot Mama’s eyes catch the movement.
She says nothing.
That is somehow more unsettling.
Dinner is loud. Chili, cornbread, sliced apples, sweet tea, and enough jokes to make the pavilion feel like a family reunion held after half the family learned self-defense.
I meet Wildflower, who looks exactly like her name for three seconds until she lifts her pant leg to show a knife tucked into her boot because August asks if all flowers are soft.
“Not this one, sugar,” she tells him with a wink.
Shortie handles security and apparently dessert because she brings out a tray of brownies and a sidearm at the same time.
Sagebrush tells me she runs breathwork, herbal steaming, massage, trauma release, and shotgun maintenance because “healing should be well-rounded.” Harlot, the shaved-headed mechanic, looks me up and down and says my truck back in Kentucky is probably insulted I left it behind.
Baby Doll, who is pretty enough to make men stupid and mean enough to make them regret it, hands me intake forms and tells me nobody here writes down what can be used against me unless I want it written.
“Court stuff?” I ask.
“Lawyer stuff,” she says. “Medical stuff. Protective stuff. Not gossip stuff. We got standards.”
August eats two bowls of chili and cornbread with honey. Princess Chomp sits beside Blue Rex. He laughs when another boy puts a noodle on his head like a wig. He gets dirt on his pajamas and sauce on his chin. He forgets to look for the door.
I watch him forget.
And I feel relief so deep it nearly takes me to my knees.
After dinner, Lottie finds me near the fire circle.
Her bag is already over her shoulder.
The sight of it sends panic through me.
“You’re leaving now?”
“If I wait till morning, you’ll spend all night dreading it.”
“That isn’t a good reason.”
“It’s a practical one.”
I fold my arms. “Does Hot Mama know you’re going?”
“Hot Mama knows when a fly sneezes near the gate.”
I look toward the main building. Hot Mama is there, talking to Shortie and Baby Doll, but her eyes flick to us like she heard her name through smoke.
Of course.
Lottie touches my arm. “You’ll be safe.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. But you will.”
I swallow. “Derby will hate you.”
“Derby already hates me. It’s part of our charm.”
“He’ll come.”
“Yes.”
“What do I say to him?”
“The truth.”
“That’s rich coming from the woman who told me not to tell him.”
Lottie winces. “Fair.”
“I lied to him.”
“You left.”
“After sleeping with him.”
Her brows lift.
I cover my face. “I can’t believe I said that out loud.”
“I can. Guilt makes women weirdly honest with other women and pathetically dishonest with men.”
“That is horrible.”
“Again, truth.”
I drop my hands. “I hurt him.”
“Yes.”
The answer is clean.
No softening.
No rescue.
Just yes.
“I thought leaving would save him,” I whisper.
“Maybe it will.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Then you deal with what it did.”
I look toward August, who is now running in circles with Princess Chomp’s owner and two other kids, all of them armed with glow sticks someone handed out after dinner.
“He looks happy,” I say.
“He looks like a kid.”
That is worse.
Better.
Everything.
Lottie hugs me then.
Hard and quick.
No warning.
I stiffen, then fold into her because I can’t help it.
She smells like road coffee, hairspray, and home I did not know I had until she dragged me away from another one.
“You did the hardest part,” she says near my ear.
“What part?”
“You moved before the men finished deciding.”
A sob catches in my throat.
She pulls back and cups my face with both hands.
Her crown tattoo peeks from behind her ear when the wind lifts her hair.
“Straighten up,” she says softly. “He’ll either come correct or Hot Mama will feed him his own boots.”
I laugh through tears.
“There she is,” Lottie says.
Then she lets me go.
I stand by the fire and watch her walk to the SUV.
Holler should be mad.
Derby will be mad.
Legend will be mad.
Every man in Kentucky may be mad, for all I know.
Lottie gets in anyway.
She honks once as she drives toward the gate.
August looks up and waves with both arms.
“Bye, Miss Lottie!”
She sticks one hand out the window.
Hot Mama calls after her, “Ride safe, Julip.”
Lottie lifts two fingers without turning around. “Don’t get sentimental, old woman.”
“Don’t make me come to Kentucky and embarrass your husband.”
“Holler embarrasses himself just fine.”
The Queens laugh, and I realize Lottie is leaving as someone larger than the woman who drove me here.
Julip.
A crown that travels.
Then she is gone under the Queens sign, back down the road, taking the last piece of familiar Kentucky with her.
Fear rises immediately.
Big.
Cold.
Hot Mama appears beside me before it can swallow me.
“You ain’t alone,” she says.
I keep my eyes on the empty road. “I feel alone.”
“That’s different.”
“Everything is different with you people.”
“We people have lived long enough to be annoyingly wise.”
I laugh weakly.
She looks toward August. “Your boy’s fine.”
“He is.”
“You’re not.”
“No.”
“Good. Fine women lie too much.”
The fire pops. Sparks rise into the Oregon dusk. Around us, the campground settles into evening. Women wash dishes. Kids chase glow sticks. A baby cries, then quiets. Someone starts playing an old guitar near the porch. The smell of smoke and chili and pine wraps around everything.
I can breathe here.
That is the terrifying part.
I can stand under strange trees, surrounded by women with crowns and scars and guns, and breathe without listening for Jeremy’s car. Without watching August watch me for clues. Without feeling Derby’s rage building like thunder on my behalf.
I can breathe.
But breathing without Derby feels like only half alive.
Hot Mama studies me like she hears that too.
“Missing him already?” she asks.
I don’t pretend not to know who she means.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
I look at her. “Good?”
“Means you didn’t run because you stopped loving him.”
The word love knocks the air out of me.
I turn toward the fire.
“I didn’t say love.”
Hot Mama smiles. “You didn’t have to, baby.”
Across the yard, August laughs so loud the sound cracks through the dark.
I press one hand to my heart.
Lonerock isn’t safety the way I imagined it.
It’s a different outlaw world, one built by women who learned the hard way that rescue without shelter is just another prayer nobody answers.
I haven’t run into peace.
I have run into a commune, a mother’s past I can’t see clearly, and a sisterhood that feels warm until I remember warm things can still burn.
But my son is laughing.
And for tonight, that is enough to keep me standing.