Page 32

“Where are the other ones?”

“We don’t need them.”

“But my hockey stuff—”

“We’ll get you new hockey stuff.”

I stared at her because even at seven I knew we didn't have enough money to replace hockey equipment for no reason.

Mom crouched in front of me and put both hands around my face. “We're going on an adventure.”

She smiled when she said it, but there were tears running down her cheeks, and I hadn't understood how someone could be happy and sad at exactly the same time.

“Is Dad coming?”

Her smile disappeared.

“No.”

My stomach immediately started hurting because I knew Dad was going to be angry. I didn't understand exactly what was happening, but I understood that with the absolute certainty of a child who had spent his entire life learning to anticipate another person's temper. Dad was going to come home and discover we were gone, and whatever happened after that was going to be bad.

“What if he finds us?”

“He won't.”

“But—”

“Ash.” Mom pulled me against her and wrapped both arms around me. “He isn't going to hurt either of us anymore.”

I could still remember her perfume, and sometimes that was the thing I missed most.

I had one photograph of her face, but there was no photograph that could capture the way she smelled. Even as an adult, I sometimes walked past a woman in a hotel lobby or an airport and caught the faintest trace of something familiar, and for a fraction of a second, I was seven again with my face pressed against my mother's neck while she promised everything was going to be all right.

“You haven't done anything wrong,” she whispered.

Except I had.

I simply hadn't done it yet.

“Come on. We have to go.”

Mom didn't take us toward the elevator. She opened the door to the fire escape instead.

I asked her why because I hated those stairs. They were metal, narrow and steep, running down the outside of the building with a metal railing that was always cold against my hand.

“The elevator's too slow,” she told me.

I learned later that wasn't the reason. There was a camera covering the lobby and another inside the elevator, and Dad knew the building manager and could get access to both.

Mom had been trying to get us out without him knowing which way we'd gone.

What she hadn't known was that there was a security camera covering the fire escape as well.

She took my hand, and we hurried down from the third floor, Mom carrying the suitcase while I struggled to keep up. I remembered being frightened by how fast we were moving and even more frightened that Dad would come home before we reached the bottom.

We made it down the first flight and turned at the landing.

“Careful,” Mom whispered.