"You know, I'm sorry for putting you in this position," I told her sincerely as she looked up and met my eyes. "It's not safe to offer strangers a ride. You have a wonderful day."
I turned and walked away, hoping that wasn't my last chance at not freezing to death out here.
A car door opened behind me, and I turned to see her half out of the car. "Come on," she called. "A massive storm is coming, and I can't leave you alone. I'll take you into Warde."
Hope flared in my chest as I turned and hurried back. "Thank you so, so much. I honestly can't tell you how much it means to me."
She didn't know it, but her kind heart might have saved my life.
When we got into the car, she cranked the heat up again, and I sank into the seat, feeling my exhaustion worse than ever. The pack sat snuggly at my feet, and since it held everything I had in the world, I was not letting it out of my sight.
"Were you camping up here alone?" she asked, and I got that she was having a hard time believing that. Nothing about me, including my clothing, screamed “experienced camper.”
"No," I said softly. "I was with my..." Boyfriend, lover, mild acquaintance? "With a friend. But it turned out that he was actually not a real friend, and when the truth about him came to light, I bailed as quickly as I could."
She was silent, and I wondered if she was going to be angry about the small lies I'd told her that didn't quite mesh with this new—mostly accurate—version of events. But she just reached out and grasped my hand.
"Sweetheart, I have been in the exact position as you, a very long time ago." She gave one final squeeze before releasing me again. "And I will give you a piece of advice from someone in the downhill sprint toward the end of this crazy thing we call life. You are young and beautiful, and men will want you for those two factors alone. They will want to own and possess and claim you. And there is nothing wrong with that because desire is a potent and enjoyable part of life.”
She didn’t have to convince me. It was half the reason I’d stuck it out with Dylan for as long as I did.
“But one day,” she continued, “you won't hold this flush of youth and vitality. One day your beauty will be mostly on the inside, and it’s not worth wasting your time on men who won’t be there for you in your older years. I made the mistake of chasing after someone who was in it for the wrong reasons, someone who didn't walk in my social circles, and for my trouble I got amazing sex but years of heartache, cheating, and abuse."
Her voice broke, and I sniffled a few times as her words hit me close to the chest.
"Are you alone now?" I asked, my voice husky.
She nodded. "I am. Alone and happier than I've ever been. Being alone was my worst fear, and it turned out, it was the best choice I could have ever made."
She let me sniffle in my seat, the silence between us surprisingly not uncomfortable. "I'm really glad you stopped for me," I said when I'd gotten myself together. "I made the choice today that I am going to change my life, make a new start away from the men who have hurt and abused me. I've been referred to as a mouse in the past few hours, and I felt as small and pathetic as one today. But... no more. This mouse is going to evolve."
She shot me a smile, taking her eyes briefly from the road. "It might have been fate that I stopped for you, young lady. It's my first time picking up a stranger, and as much as I wanted to leave you there, I felt an urge to take a chance on you."
"My name is Brooke," I said, deciding to ditch Brooklyn completely.
"I'm Ruth," she replied. "It's so nice to meet you, Brooke."
For the rest of the twenty minutes into the town, we chatted about our favorites in life—food, movies, geographical locations. I had to guess at some of those, since I'd barely even left my house before, but Ruth was very well traveled, and she regaled me with stories about Egypt and Vietnam and other amazingly exotic-sounding places.
"Where would you like me to drop you, Brooke?" she asked when we entered the town.
I thought about it for a moment. "Walmart, if possible. Or as close to." I’d never been to a Walmart in my entire life, but I was willing to bet it’d be the last place on earth Dylan would look for me. If he was looking for me. Which he probably wasn’t.
She nodded. "It’ll take me about ten minutes to get there, if that’s okay?"
"I can walk," I said in a rush. "You've already helped me far more than I deserved."
Ruth just laughed. "You're too sweet, and I can see how you've let yourself fall into the hands of powerful men."
Somehow, she knew exactly what Blake and Dylan were like, even without me giving her more than a few snippets of facts about them.
"And I need to stock up before the storm, so I'll head in as well, if that's okay."
I nodded, not wanting to let the kindest person I'd ever met go just yet. "Thank you. I'd love that."
Ruth just smiled, like she already knew I had no desire to be alone, and continued driving across Warde. When we arrived at Walmart, I anxiously left my pack in Ruth’s car at her suggestion—no Walmart would let me carry a bag that big inside—and got out. Ruth stayed by my side the whole way into the store, chatting about her farm on the outskirts of town, which she'd just recently bought and moved into.
"It sounds lovely," I murmured as she grabbed herself a shopping cart at the front of the store.
