From age four, she’d relished turning the pages of the tattered book her father would read to her about the man who sold hats, making his way along the countryside under apple trees and along windy lanes. When the last page was turned, she’d put her cheek on his tobacco-scented shoulder, and they’d talk about what it would be like if they embarked on such journeys, rambling the roads every day, the people they’d see, the campfire meals they’d cook together under a canopy of stars.
“Someday,Kitten. I’m going to quit mybean counter job and get a trailer,and we’llgo on rides together.”
That would spin a whole new thread of conversation about their destinations, warm tropical places, faraway deserts, the dangerous ice roads through Canada, forests, sandy stretches of California coastline, and everything in between. When she heard the sadness creep into her father’s voice, she’d hold him extra tight.
She didn’t understand that he was trapped in a job he despised, a life he struggled to afford, quietly growing more desperate each day.
He’d never gotten that trailer.
He’d gone to jail after stealing money from his company to pay the mortgage after much of his salary had gone into car repairs, a new roof after theirs was lost to a storm, and to cover a series of bad investment choices he’d been certain would turn them around financially. The day it had all come out was permanently burned into her memory.
“You stole money?”Her mother had been in the process of putting on her earrings for a church meeting, and she stood there, gold circle suspended in her fingertips, staring at her husband.
“I did. I’m sorry.I told the cops everything. Took full responsibility. I’llgo to jail and afterward I’ll work the restof my life to repay what I’ve taken.”
Kit had held her breath as the seconds ticked by, stricken by the utter defeat in her father’s voice as her mother answered.
“How am I going to hold myhead up in this town? I’m humiliated. Completely.”
She’d been too young then to understand why the comment bothered her.
I’m humiliated.
It was true, what her mother said. She’d borne the label of being married to a criminal, lost friends who’d cut her off, endured whispers of acquaintances in the supermarket. The impact on her mother had been terrible. But in the space of that single remark, her father had shifted from husband to criminal, and nothing he’d ever said or done later had changed that in her mother’s mind. Kit had never thought of him that way, though. He was her father, her hero, who’d made a colossal mistake. Who’d apologized and tried to make amends like he’d taught her how to do since she was a toddler.
“You’re gonna hurt people in this life,Kit.”He’d pointed to her chest.“That line of sinruns through every human heart. You gotta ask for forgivenessand mean it.”
He’d asked.
And he’d meant it.
So what did it say about the person who would not grant it? The Christian woman who’d been forgiven but couldn’t forgive?
The ringing of the phone each week, her father calling, filled her grandparents small house in a nearby town where they’d moved. She’d been forbidden to answer, and the letters he’d written were destroyed before she could read them. Her mother would only speak of her father when pushed to the limit. At seventeen, Kit made elaborate plans to run away. She’d apply the pittance she earned cleaning offices after school to a trailer, get her license, sweep up her father, bolt. They’d live together on the road like they’d planned.
But she’d been a minor, and he’d grown sick by the time he was released four years later. Upon his dischargefrom jail, he’d worked two minimum wage jobs, rented a room in a converted garage, and died within six months, before he’d actually repaid all the money he’d taken. His dream dried up.
Kit’s never had.
A feather stuck to the window, broken at the tip. She hoped the bird had flown away, undamaged, to a safe place. Moisture collected under her lashes. Cullen’s gaze flicked briefly to hers in the rearview mirror as if he knew she was washed in sudden grief.
Tot wriggled and she resettled her, keeping her own gaze away from Cullen’s.
He’s notpart of your future.
You’re on your own.
Like she’d been since she was a teen.
“Left turn,” Archie said.
“There is no left.” Cullen gripped the wheel in exasperation. “There’s only a bunch of rocks that look like the other rocks.”
“Left turn there,” Archie said, pointing. “See that flat spot? That’s the start of the Silver Canyon trail. We turn off here and it’s twenty more miles to the evacuation site.”
Cullen snorted. “Practically a hop, skip, and jump.”
“Don’t be snarky.”
