Lottie’s face does something complicated. “Maybe.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I believe you need to believe that.”
That cuts too close.
I get in the car.
Lottie closes my door before I can escape my own decision.
A second later, she slides behind the wheel, starts the engine, and backs out without headlights until we reach the curve of the drive. The house slips away in the mirror, porch dim, windows still, Derby asleep inside.
I watch until trees swallow it.
Then the first sob comes.
Silent.
Ugly.
Lottie says nothing.
Bless her.
August is quiet in the back, either asleep again or pretending because he knows grown-up pain is too big for him this early.
We hit the main road as the sky begins to lighten.
Kentucky rolls past in blue-gray shadows. Fences. Fields. Wet blacktop. Farm signs. Old barns. Horses with their heads down against the morning chill. I watch the mirror until my eyes ache, expecting the roar of Widowmaker to rise behind us.
It doesn’t.
Of course it doesn’t.
Derby is sleeping.
The thought hurts worse than if he chased us immediately.
The first hour passes in road noise and guilt.
Lottie drives like she learned from a moonshiner being chased by demons. Fast but smooth, one hand on the wheel, the other wrapped around a travel mug of coffee so strong I can smell it over the old leather seats. She avoids the main routes at first, taking county roads and state highways, cutting around places I would not have thought to avoid because I still think like a woman who believes roads are public.
Lottie thinks like a woman who knows roads can be watched.
At a gas station near the state line, she pays cash. She makes me and August stay in the car until she checks the bathrooms, then escorts us like we are in a bad spy movie wearing muddy boots. August picks a granola bar, a chocolate milk, and a small bag of chips shaped like dinosaurs because apparently every store in America is conspiring to make me cry today.
“Can we call Derby?” he asks when we get back in the SUV.
My hand tightens around the burner phone.
“No, baby.”
“Why?”
“Because we need to get farther first.”
“Is Jeremy following?”