Prologue #2
“Mom.” Zelda’s voice snapped me out of the dark memories. She stood with her fists clenched at her sides. Her dark eyes never stopped scanning the street below. “Someone’s coming. Blue car and it’s slow.”
My heart seized. “Andy’s car is silver,” I said, but my voice betrayed me with its tremor.
“It’s not stopping,” Kira whispered from the other window. Unlike her sister, she’d made herself small, nearly invisible behind the curtain. The threadbare stuffed rabbit she’d had since she was three was clutched against her chest, its missing eye and matted fur testimony to years of fierce love.
I tucked a stray hair behind my ear, a nervous habit I couldn’t break.
“Keep watching. Both of you.” The full backpack sat where I’d hidden it, tucked behind the box of Christmas decorations we hadn’t used in two years.
Black, nondescript, with a broken zipper I’d safety-pinned closed, it contained two changes of clothing for each of us, a travel pack of various toiletries, and a burner phone with its charger as well as the girls’ birth certificates and Social Security cards.
I had put this pack together a month ago but hadn’t yet worked up the courage to actually use it.
I was out of time.
I climbed up on one of the shelves in the same closet.
At the top was the door to the attic. There wasn’t a ladder or anything.
Just an opening. I could get high enough to stick my head and shoulders through the opening.
The crawlspace was close to the corner of the house.
On the outside wall, shoved as far back as I could reach, was a small plastic box.
Inside it was all the cash I’d managed to save for the past couple of months.
Two hundred and sixty-seven dollars. That’s what stood between us and a means to leave the maniac I’d married.
The faded tattoo of two stars on my wrist caught the light.
One for Zelda, one for Kira. I’d done them myself the day after they were born, these miracle twins I’d made from horror.
Fifteen and terrified in that foster home, with that man.
But I’d worked hard to prove I could take care of the girls.
Social services couldn’t take them away from me unless I proved neglectful, though they really wanted Zelda and Kira.
Regulated or not, the state adoption system was just as corrupt as everything else and infant girls whose mothers didn’t have a history of drug addiction were a rarity, something the public defender assigned to me pointed out.
While there was a bunch of outrage at his accusations, once he’d voiced them the judge had no choice but to give me a fair chance.
No matter how much money he stood to lose.
The girls were mine, stars in the darkness.
The only brightness in a world that had never been kind.
Now Andy wanted to take one of my stars and hand her over like property.
Not as long as I was still breathing.
“He said he’d be gone until nine,” I said, checking the clock for the hundredth time. “We need to be on the four-fifteen bus.” I hadn’t told the girls what I’d heard. Not the specifics. Just that we had to go, and go now, and never look back. “We’ve got thirty minutes to get to the bus station.”
But Zelda knew. Somehow, she always knew. I’d seen it in her eyes when I woke them up thirty minutes before, whispering urgent instructions to grab only what they could carry. She hadn’t asked questions. Just nodded and started organizing her sister, too adult for her twelve years.
“Mom,” Kira’s voice was barely audible. “What if he finds us?”
I climbed down from the shelves with my stash and knelt to tuck two-thirds of my roll of bills in one of the inner pockets of my backpack. The rest I put in my jeans pocket before I zipped the bag with a decisive tug. “He won’t.”
“But what if he does?” Zelda demanded, turning from the window at last. “What’s the plan?
We need a plan.” She stood there, wiry and small for her age, jaw set in defiance, and I saw myself at fifteen, facing down a world that only wanted to use me.
But the difference was, Zelda had me. And I would die before I let anyone hurt her or her sister.
“The plan is we get as far away as possible. I have a friend in Nashville --” I didn’t really.
Andy had systematically cut every person from my life, one by one, until there was no one left to notice the bruises he was careful to leave where clothes would cover.
“We’ll be fine. I have a place to go when we get there.
Just for a few days, until I can figure out somewhere permanent. ”
Not a friend’s place. A shelter for abused women.
I’d spent the hours since I’d heard Andy talking trying to find some place a reasonable distance where I could still be far enough to hide from Andy.
Nashville was three hours away. I’d found a family attorney with so many positive reviews I had to at least ask if they knew of a safe shelter in the area.
Lana Thompson had given me the phone number of a shelter willing to give us time to get there without giving our space away.
In fact, after I’d explained the situation to her, she’d said they’d be more than happy to hold us a space as long as we needed to stay.
“Will he be mad?” Kira asked, her fingers worrying at the rabbit’s ear.
A hysterical laugh bubbled up in my throat, which I swallowed down.
Mad didn’t begin to cover what Andrew Harlow would be when he discovered we were gone.
With what he owed to his business associates, the kind of men who’d accept a child as payment, our disappearance would be more than an inconvenience.
It would likely be a death sentence. Whether for him or us was the real question.
“Doesn’t matter what he feels,” I said, slinging the backpack over my shoulder. “We need to move. Now.”
Zelda took Kira’s hand automatically, positioning herself between her sister and the door, a habit she’d developed years ago. I led them down the back stairs. At the kitchen door, I paused, scanning the small yard that backed up to an alley. Empty. For now.
“Stay close,” I whispered. “If I tell you to run, you run. Understand? You don’t stop until I say so.” I took a deep breath, twisted the lock, and pushed open the door to the life I was leaving behind.
We slipped through backyards like shadows, avoiding the pools of light from streetlamps.
The sodium glow gave everything a sickly orange tint, turning familiar landmarks sinister.
Kira stumbled once over an unseen root, and I caught her before she fell, my heart hammering so hard I thought it might crack my ribs.
Three blocks. Four. Five. The backpack straps cut into my shoulder, but the pain was clarifying. It kept me moving forward when fear threatened to freeze my limbs. We emerged onto Main Street just as the bus pulled up to the stop, its brakes hissing like a warning.
“Go,” I urged, giving Zelda a gentle push toward the doors. “Window seats. Back of the bus.”
The driver barely glanced at us as we paid. Zelda claimed the rear corner, where she could see everything, pulling Kira into the seat beside her. I took the seat across the aisle, arranging our bags as a barrier between us and the rest of the bus.
The doors closed. The engine rumbled. And with a lurch that made my stomach heave, we were moving. Away from the house that had been a prison. Away from the man who thought he owned us.
As the lights of our neighborhood faded behind us, I pressed my forehead against the cool glass and made a silent promise to my daughters, to my stars.
No one would ever hurt them again. No one would ever use them as bargaining chips or punching bags or playthings.
Not Andy, not his associates, not anyone.
I’d failed them before, staying too long, believing things would change. But I wouldn’t fail them again.
The bus picked up speed, carrying us into darkness and uncertainty. But for the first time in years, uncertainty felt like hope instead of dread. Not hope, exactly, but certain knowledge that, for good or for ill, our lives were about to change forever.