"I lied, and I let Anke around them," I sniffled. "She was going to kidnap Henry."
"Do you know where she is?" Willow asked.
"No and I never want to see her again. She ruined everything good in my life."
"Look," Willow said. "There's a tiny house village about an hour's drive east. You remember Homer? I told him you were coming. He says they have a spot for you to park the house."
"Thanks," I told Willow. "I have to go. I'm not supposed to use the phone and drive."
I hung up, and my phone beeped. I set Google Maps to the address Willow had given me. But it had barely calculated the route before the battery died.
"Crap!"
I had been relying on the phone Mace had given me since it was brand-new and could run for a day on one battery charge. My old phone could not. And of course the ancient truck had nowhere to plug in an adaptor.
"Okay, Josie," I pep-talked myself. The sky was dark overhead, and thunder rolled. "The village is… that way. I think." After driving for over an hour, I didn't find it.
I pulled into a gas station.
"Oh no," the attendant said when I told her the address. "That's the opposite direction. You need to go back through Harrogate and keep driving east."
"Thanks," I said dejectedly. I bought a few gallons of gas then slumped in the truck.
"Why does this have to happen to me? Why?" I whispered, banging my head on the steering wheel. I grabbed a handful of candy from the jar, trying to forget about all the times I had teased Mace about eating my candy.
My heart ached from missing him. I hated myself for hurting him. The cold anger on his face when he had looked at me and said I was fired was going to haunt me every night for the rest of my life.
My nose ran as I headed back toward Harrogate. I knew I looked like a wreck. I was an ugly crier on a good day, and I had been crying nonstop since this morning. My face was puffy and swollen. I rolled down the window to bring the cold air in. All I got was a face full of dirty water from the windshield.
"I hate my life!" I screamed as I drove at a crawl down the road. The tiny house was swerving dangerously, like there was something heavy on top of it. Maybe the tiny house would actually kill me. But I didn't want it to flip over. Then I would be a jobless,homelessdisgrace.
As I drove, a car came my direction and blinked its headlights at me.
"What the—my lightsareon! Why is everyone out to get me?" I screeched.
As the car passed, I looked out the window to yell at the driver, and I jerked the wheel in surprise. "Mace?"
"Pull over!" he called out to me. I navigated the truck and tiny house to a wide shoulder on the road and sat there, the spray from the rain coming into my car through the window and dripping from the plastic garbage sack I'd stuffed in the hole in the roof. I half wondered if I was hallucinating. The only thing I'd had to eat that day was candy. Maybe my sweet tooth was about to do me in.
But Mace was very real as he ran up to the driver's side of the truck and opened the door.
"What are you doing here?" I asked. I wanted to cry, but I was so exhausted. Mace pulled me out of the car, bundling me in his arms.
"You're freezing," he said.
"Why did you come find me?" I asked and sneezed pathetically.
"Come into my car. You're going to get pneumonia. You shouldn't even be driving this truck. You could have had a wreck and died," he said, ushering me to his car.
As I sat in his car and sipped the water he'd given me, I stared out the front windshield at the back of my tiny house.
"I am so sorry, Mace," I said, turning to him.
"No, I'm the one who's sorry," he said.
This time I did start crying. "Stop being so perfect! I screwed up," I cried.
"Yes, but not as bad as Adrian, and I didn't fire him." Mace swept a hand through my tangled, wet hair.
