“Have you ever been in a car before?” I ask as I ease the car into gear.
She shakes her head.
Christ. Again—what have I done?!
We crawl down the dirt road past the hand-split fences and The Enclave shrinks in the rearview mirror.
I wait until we hit a paved road before I speak again.
“What happened back there—the ceremony—I just wanted to get you away from that pack of crazies.” Oh, fuck, I probably shouldn’t have called them that, not to her. She’s one of them. Or, shewas.“What I mean is, now that we’re out of there, we can ignore the marriage altogether.”
She watches the windshield. No reaction.
“In order for a marriage to be recognized by the state of Illinois, you need a license. Issued by the county clerk. Filed at the courthouse. None of that happened.” I glance at her.“There’s no paperwork. No government record. As far as the law is concerned, we’re not married.”
She turns her head. Her brown eyes search my face. I can’t read what’s behind them.
“That means you’re free,” I tell her. “You can go wherever you want. Live however you choose.”
Nothing. The silence stretches. I’m used to reading people—their tells, their micro-expressions, the subtle shifts in posture that reveal what their mouths won’t say. I can parse a boardroom full of liars in under five minutes.
Prudence gives me nothing. Not defiance, not relief, not anger. She’s sitting in a leather seat in a dress held together by my belt, her bare feet on the floor mat, and her face is a closed door.
“Do you understand what I’m telling you?” I press. “You’re free. That marriage doesn’t exist.”
“You said I do.” Her voice is quiet. Not accusatory, but factual.
“I said I do to get you out from in front of that whipping post.”
She considers this. Her hands knot together in her lap, and I notice the calluses—thick ridges across her palms, the kind that come from years of physical labor. Her nails are short and ragged, and there’s dirt ground into the creases.
“So…” I say after another five or so minutes of silence, “is there somewhere I can drop you off?”
She looks at her bare feet.
No answer.
“Where would you like to go?” I prod.
She lifts her gaze and holds mine for a count of three. “Where would I go?”
Four words. The quietness of them is worse than a scream. There’s no self-pity in her voice. No drama. She’s stating a factthe way you’d state the weather. The sky is gray. The road is wet. I have nowhere to go.
I tighten my grip on the wheel. “Family? A relative’s house?”
“I have no family.”
“Friends? Someone you trust?”
“The Flock is—” She stops. Reconsiders. “The Flock is my only family.”
“So, there’s no one?”
“No.”
The highway opens ahead of us. The city skyline materializes through the haze—glass towers and steel and a million lives stacked on top of one another. Her eyes widen in awe.
I run a hand through my hair and reach for a practical angle. That’s what I do. I’m a problem-solver. A fixer. Give me a crisis, and I’ll map you a dozen routes to the other side of it before you’ve finished describing the problem.
