had said before the last move.
I thought Lia had been joking. Dreaming out loud, as she usually did. We both did. Who didn’t want to stop moving and settle down and live in peace?
But there was no peace for us. There never would be. Not while Slater lived.
Despite my protests, Lia had arranged—behind my back—everything. Since the last time they found us at the motel three months ago, we had zigzagged across the country, only stopping when necessary.
And we hadn’t been caught once.
That gave Lia the confidence to move forward with the second part of her plan: securing fake documents and settling down in a nice, quiet town in the middle of nowhere.
With a grunt, I grabbed my backpack at my feet and followed the older woman into the house. Lia had turned on the lights and was now walking from room to room.
She peeked her head from what looked like a kitchen in the back and smiled at me. “I know it’s small, but it looks great.” She disappeared again.
I glanced around. What was so great about scratched floors, peeling paint, spiderwebs, and dust? I took two steps into the foyer and placed my hand on the wooden rail of the stairs leading to the second floor. Loose, as I thought. To the right was a living room with a small fireplace. Red bricks, chipped and worn with age, climbed the wall. To the left, a glass chandelier hung precariously from the ceiling. I sighed. The house looked old. It was falling apart.
Just like us.
“How long are we staying here?” I asked, raising my voice so I could be heard from anywhere in the house.
Lia appeared from the other door in the dining room. “I signed the lease for two years, but hopefully more.”
I frowned, sure I hadn’t heard her right. “Wait. What?”
“Why so surprised? We’ve been talking about finding a place for us for a long time.”
For more than seven years, but who was counting? “We can’t stay here. Not for more than a week, maybe a month, and that might be too long.”
Lia reached for my hands. “It's been months, Kenna.” Since we started moving aimlessly, we had changed our names. I wasn’t Makenna anymore. For the last three months, I had been only Kenna. “He won’t find us here.”
I pulled my hands from hers and took a step back. “He’ll never stop looking. Even if it takes him ten years, twenty! He’ll find us.”
She shook her head. “We can’t run forever. You’re young. Hell, I’m young too. We deserve to live our lives.”
What lives? I barely remembered my childhood, and the only images etched in my memory were bad ones. Bloody ones. As for Cecilia … she had been taken when she was twenty. That was eighteen years ago. Did she really know another way of life?
I looked down at the dull wooden floor, ashamed of myself. Cecilia had suffered for so long. We both had. Of course she would want a better life. She really did deserve it. But here … living in this house, in this small town on the other side of the country, was still not far enough. Perhaps if I convinced her to move to a remote island, or some other faraway corner of the world, then we might have a chance.
At this point, I really doubted we would make it.
And yet, I couldn’t stop myself from falling for Cecilia’s dream.
Tomorrow. I would talk to her about this silly dream tomorrow. We could use a good night sleep first.
“Okay,” I whispered.
Her brown eyes lit up. “Really?”
How could I say no to her? “Really.”
Smiling, she advanced to me and squeezed me in a tight hug. “Everything will be okay. You’ll see.” She kissed my cheek, then continued her perusal of the house. She went back to the kitchen and opened the back door. The outside lights came on, illuminating what looked like a small porch. “Oh my word, come see this!”
What? Did the house come with a pool? For Lia to be renting it, it had to be super cheap, and I doubted a cheap house came with a pool.
Knowing she would bother me until I let her show me the backyard, I dragged my feet out to the porch.
A big cherry tree sat on the right side of the yard, leaning over the short wooden fence and spilling over to the neighbor’s backyard. Its soft pink flowers were in full bloom and emanating a sweet scent.
“Wow,” I whispered.
“I know,” she said.