“They’re the only one I’ve got,” she said, voice cracking with tears.
Hallie shook her head. Audrey’s sadness broke her heart, but this wasn’t about her and she wasn’t going to pull a Michele and make it be. “That’s not true. Not anymore.”
“It is. I don’t… I can’t… I haven’t…”
“I can take you to one that’s better than this.” She didn’t even need to think it through. It was easy, natural. She could show Audrey all the things she deserved. Shewantedto.
Audrey blinked rapidly, her eyes teary. “What?”
Hallie smiled. “Are you up for a little drive?”
“We have a schedule—”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters right now is you, and we’re not baking cookies with your family while your mother is being a shit.”
“Your jeans must be soaked.”
“I have spares in the car. Winter preparedness.”
“Oh.”
“I even have some sweatpants you can borrow while yours dry, if you like?” She laughed lightly. “They might be a little short but it’s still better than sitting in wet pants.”
Audrey nodded slowly. She looked out of it. Hallie figured that made sense. She’d never been in a situation like Audrey with her family, but she could only imagine the way your system struggled to cope with it.
“Great,” she said, moving to stand up and hold a hand out to Audrey. “Let’s go on a little roadtrip.”
Audrey still looked confused but she took Hallie’s hand and stood up.
Hallie pulled her keys from her pocket, thinking it probably said something that she walked around this place with her wallet and her keys like she, too, was ready to bolt at any moment. “We can take turns changing in the back.”
“Okay.”
She held her arms out to Audrey again, just holding there, in case Audrey wanted a hug. It took less time than last night for Audrey to nod and fall into her arms.
She was quite a bit taller than Hallie, but she felt so fragile as they hugged, and Hallie knew she wasn’t only hugging adult Audrey. She was hugging all the versions this fucking family had hurt. And she was going to do her utmost to help heal every single version of her.
Starting with a trip to another family where the holidays were joyous and happy and filled with love, and who would love to see Audrey.
Chapter Twelve
…seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty…
If Audrey could do it right, do it enough times, everything would be okay.
Except it wouldn’t. Not really. She knew that. She knew her hands ached from the hours of tapping she’d been doing, but she couldn’t stop.
Terrible thoughts attacked her already exhausted mind. She tried desperately to zip them into folders and file them away inside a million overfilled and locked cabinets. But they wouldn’t stay put.
Her mind was spiraling, struggling, and she didn’t know what to do.
The radio was playing softly, and she was grateful they weren’t sitting in silence, but she was trying to do better, trying to be able to hold a conversation—to say anything at all. The familiar blockade between her brain and her mouth had sprung up once they’d settled in the car, their wet pants hung over the back seat, and she’d been trapped inside her mind ever since.
She knew what she was supposed to do, and she was trying to look fine, look unbothered, look normal. She hid her hands between her knees and she fought every wince that rushed through her when she moved. The muscles of her shoulders pressed oppressively against her, begging her to curl in on herself, to lie down, to cry, to sleep. Just to make it go away. But she couldn’t do that. It wasn’t right. Her family already thought she was terrible. She had to be okay for Hallie.
Hallie had been driving for a while now. Audrey wasn’t sure how long, but definitely more than an hour. They were still in Michigan, but, judging from the dropping temperatures and increasing snow coverage, they were heading north.
Audrey would take it. She didn’t know where they were going but all that mattered was that they were goingaway.
