A new Nelle walks through the house, chin held high, James beside her, strange folder held tight against her chest. She walks out into the sticky night, tears dry on her cheeks, fireflies blinking between the trees, and watches flames lurch off the tin roof, an artist stepping back to survey her canvas after brushing on the final stroke.
James starts his truck. Nelle climbs into the cab and feels along the cracks in the leather seat. He gingerly hovers his finger over the still-fresh cut in her palm.
“Is this okay?” he asks.
“Yes.” She braces herself for the burn as his fingertips touch her open wound.
On the dashboard, he writes:Nelle rides with James.
A tight ball of yarn unspools inside her. As her cut stitches back together, Nelle watches the road and listens to her life crackle away over the sound of gravel under the tires.
Part Two
Wish Me on My Way
Chapter 9
Stopped at the one traffic light in Lincoln, James watches a stream of fire trucks and ambulances rush past, lights flaring red, sirens wailing. He cuts right onto Anderson and parks in his parents’ uphill driveway. Through the bug-strewn windshield, their two-story house rises white and formidable. The sirens fade.
Nelle peers through the windshield. The moon sits over his house like a vintage plate hung in the sky.
“This is where you live?”
“Yeah.”
James grips the steering wheel, and a clammy heat creeps into his face. What is common practice after leaving someone to burn to death?
“Do you think Quill will try to escape?”
“Maybe.” She chews her bottom lip. “But if he could still control me, he would’ve. He kept my ink in the room he set fire to. It’s long gone.”
That’s a relief, at least. Still, he isn’t sure what to do. Nelle has nowhere to go. Will his parents take her in? Even if they do, he doesn’t know what she will do in a few weeks when he moves back to college. He hates himself for the regret he feels. Every time he thinks he is getting out of one uncomfortable situation with Nelle, he finds himself in another.
“What’s in that folder?” He gestures to the manila rectangle in her lap.
Nelle breaks the seam and cracks it open. A birth certificate. A social security card. All the information she needs to live. To travel. Even a passport, Nelle’s teenage face staring up at them. All under the nameEleanor Quill.
“How did he get all of that?” he asks.
“I remember the day he took me to the courthouse for that picture. I didn’t ask why, I was just happy to leave the house. The rest isn’t mine.” She passes it over. “It’s his dead daughter’s. He told the police officer that she didn’t die, that she moved to Scotland to be with family.”
“But shediddie, right?”
“Yes. She died.”
“But the government thinks she’s alive,” James says. “So, legally, you are Eleanor now. Maybe he wants you to be able to live on your own. Maybe ...”
“He actually loved me?” Nelle says. “In some twisted way?”
“Isn’t it possible?”
“You don’t torture someone you love.”
James flinches. “You’re right.”
“Thank you, by the way.”
“What did I do?”
