They could even take a vacation, drive all the way to the gulf, rent a little condo on a Texas beach. She’d never seen the ocean, and neither had Everett, and she wanted to show him that before it was too late. Before he grew up and moved away and told stories of the strange, isolated life she’d given him.
And he would move away. She knew that. When his father had first vanished, Everett had wailed at the idea of leaving their house and moving. “Dad will come back and we won’t be here!”
She’d cried with him, but it had been a simple grief, because she couldn’t fix the problem. After three months of missed mortgage payments, the bank had swooped in, and they’d been homeless. This job had put a roof over their heads.
But now . . . now life was more stable, and she’d lived through a few years of Everett’s complaints about “this stupid town,” and she wanted something better for him.
They were so close. Another year and she could move up instead of over. With a better credit score, she could find work in accounting, pretend the past six years hadn’t happened, and even tout her long, steady commitment to one company. One more year and they would escape this town for something better. All she had to do was not fuck it up.
The town no longer seemed as idyllic as it had when her father had moved them to Herriman, settling in his old hometown to raise a family. Lily had spent three happy years here before Dad had decided he didn’t want a wife and child anymore. Well, not the same wife and child, anyway. He’d found comfort in the arms of another woman pretty quickly, and then he’d found comfort in having two strong sons.
Her mother, barely treading the waters of emotional stability before the divorce, had needed a job and an apartment—and above all else, a new man—so she and Lily had moved to St. Louis.
If Lily had returned to Herriman with her own husband and child in an attempt to re-create her old happiness, that effort had failed spectacularly. It was time to move on. Or almost time.
When she eased off the highway exit toward the dark road to the business park, she noticed the car right away. It was parked on the frontage road that stretched out like a tail along the small neighborhood of shuttered houses, but outside the reach of the closest streetlight. The dark-colored sedan faced the road, but if there was someone inside, Lily couldn’t see them. It was all one twisted lump of shadow and reflection.
She rolled past the corner, straining to look, but then she snapped her head forward and drove on. It was none of her business. She’d left her burden at that truck stop, and now she was free and clear. Goose bumps shivered over her skin, but she made it home, closed the gate behind her, and refused to look back.
CHAPTER 5
When the boy sitting next to Everett got up to exit at his stop, Josephine plopped right down into the vacated seat and leaned close. “Hey,” she said.
“Hi.” He’d passed her in the hallway at school that morning and dared to tip up his chin in greeting. She’d smiled and said hello, and he felt like maybe they were edging toward friendliness.
She bumped him with her shoulder. “I asked my mom if I could hang out at your place after school, and she said that’s fine if your mom calls her.”
Everett drew his head back in alarm at this sudden acceleration. “My place? Why would you want to come to my place?”
“I want to see your environs.” She drew the word out, sounding like a comic-book villain. “Your apartment sounds cool.”
After a nearly sleepless night of thinking about what he’d found in that locker, Everett felt too tired to navigate this minefield, so he decided to just ask. “Are you doing this to make fun of me or something?”
She rolled her eyes and slouched down in her seat, staying quiet for so long that Everett began to squirm. She finally sighed and tipped her face toward him. “Okay, like I said, Bea moved, and I’m stuck way out here for three more years until I get my driver’s permit. You seem like a nice guy. You’re the only one around. We should be friends. That makes sense, right?”
He kept staring at her until she rolled her eyes again. “Are you racist?”
“No!” he practically shouted.
“So your social calendar is full way out here? You have secret woodland friends or something?”
It took effort not to crack a smile at that. He crossed his arms tight over his chest as a reminder to play this cool. “No, I don’t have secret woodland friends.”
“Then invite me over, dummy.”
Everett didn’t know what to do. He hated that she’d brought up his living arrangements last time, but a lot of that was self-consciousness rubbing his insides raw. The way he lived was weird. There were definitely no other kids in Herriman who lived in a business park, so it burned like fire that she pointed it out. But he was better than that, wasn’t he?