Her laugh slowly faded, staring at the eggs…then she wrinkled her nose, thinking hard.
“Take me out,” she said.
I sobered fast. “You sure?”
She bit her lip, looking at the floor and nodding. “Yeah. I think…I think—if I’m gonna stay, they’ll find out eventually, they might even already know.” She looked back up at me. “I don’t want to live afraid. I wanna be…” She gestured around the room, toward the window. “...out there.”
Something shifted in my chest.
Not the grief thing. Not the careful thing. Something newer than that, something that had only been there a couple weeks and was already taking up more space than I knew what to do with.
"Okay," I said.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." I reached out and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. "Get dressed. I'll take you to the diner."
Her face did the thing—the almost-smile going all the way, no hesitation in it.
She went down the hall.
I stood in the kitchen with the ruined pan in the sink and Nickel looking up at me with her ears forward and thought about what it meant that she'd said it.I don't want to live afraid.Three weeks ago she'd barely wanted to cross the porch. Now she was standing in my kitchen in my t-shirt telling me she wanted to be out there.
I thought about Sawyer on the porch steps.
I think you're scared she's going to be good for you. And then you'll have to actually be here. All the way.
I fed Nickel her cheese.
ELEVEN
Willa
I’d lived in Briar Hill for four years, but I’d never actually seen the town.
My arrival had been…well, pretty scary, actually. My papa and a few other men from our homestead had loaded me into a van, the windows tinted. I said goodbye to my sisters. The next day, I’d woken up at the Daley Homestead and met my husband.
Shepherd Daley…forty years my senior, with three other wives and five children, two of them older than me.
I tried very hard not to think about Mr. Daley as we climbed into Forrest’s truck and drove down the gravel driveway…his hand wrapped around mine, holding me tight. I held him back, glad he was there and also wondering why I’d asked to do this.
“You good?” Forrest asked as the gate came into sight. “We don’t have to?—”
“I want to,” I said. “I really do. It’s just…”
He nodded, not making me finish the sentence. “I’ll be there with you every step of the way. And the folks at the diner—they know our family. You’re safe. I swear.”
We drove past the gate.
I kept breathing.
“The Daleys aren’t exactly popular in Briar Hill,” he said as the gravel turned to asphalt and the trees cleared. “Never have been. We’ve…a few of us have worried for a long time about what was going on out there.”
“So they won’t like me?” I asked quietly.
“No!” he said, eyes darting over. “No, no…that’s not what I mean.”
“ButI’m a Daley.”
