This Little Light - Lori Lansens Page 0,101
it goes?”
I laughed. For real laughed. “Sure.” Then I asked, because I knew he’d know, “My mother?”
“She’s coming. She’s on her way.”
I saw my mother’s face in the moonlight. Her eyes. Her smile. Of course Shelley was coming for us. But hearing it from Chase? Oh my God. My chin started to quiver.
Maybe Chase was worried I’d start bawling again, because he kissed me once more and said, “Stay strong. There’s more to come.”
“More?”
“It’s gonna be meta, Rory.”
“Oh.”
“People are gonna wanna talk to you.”
“The authorities, you mean?”
“The press. Everybody will want to hear your story.”
“It’s all in my blog. Everything. It’s all in there.”
He glanced up at the clock on the wall and turned back to me, serious. “Your mother’s in a coast guard boat headed this way right now. It’ll take about an hour for them to get here. There’ll be a guy with her, driving the boat—a friend.”
“Okay.”
“They’ll take you up the coast. Not sure where. Your aunt Lilly will be there, waiting in a van.”
I was so relieved at the thought that I’d be seeing my aunt Lilly. “Where will they take us?”
“They talked about getting you to Vancouver. That’s all I know right now.”
“Fee and Paula too, right?”
“Fee and Paula too.”
I had to know. “How are you…like, why are you…?”
He paused. “My sister.”
“The one who died in the car crash?”
“It wasn’t a car crash.”
“Oh.”
“They’d just passed the six-week fetal heartbeat restriction in Iowa. She was eight weeks. I found her bleeding in the garage.”
I had no words.
“When we moved here, I just wanted to forget it happened. But I’d hear things at school. Like, these girls who were, you know, in trouble, and they needed help, and a safe place to go. And it’s just so stupid, because it’s so hard to get birth control, and anyway, I listened and I got connected and I got involved and…”
“You’ve been involved in this…since you were fourteen?”
He nodded. “Your friend? Feliza? Is it true? She’s really pregnant?”
“It’s true.”
“The father?”
“I can’t…just not right now. The fucker isn’t gonna get away with it, though.”
“The fucker know she’s pregnant?”
I nodded.
“I can help her find a way to do what she needs to do if she makes that choice.”
We heard the blades of a copter overhead and watched as it banked out over the ocean on its way toward the Santa Monica Pier.
“The bounty hunters are still out there,” I said. “Even though Jagger and Jinny and her dad have all disappeared.”
“After the Feds and media sort this shit out, even the Crusaders’ll have to change their hymn. Don’t worry about the bounty hunters. We got you.”
“Okay.”
Chase got a buzz and checked his cell phone. “I gotta go,” he said.
“Really?”
He took my face in his hands. “Rory, it’s okay.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll see you in a few days. Or maybe a few weeks. Trust me.”
“I do.” I actually do.
He looked at the clock on the wall before sending a text back. Then he said, “In one hour. Stroke of midnight. You take Fee and the kid, and you go out to the beach. Don’t stop. Walk straight out to the ocean.”
“Stroke of midnight.”
“They’re lighting off fireworks at the pier. There’ll be thousands of people and crowd control issues. Everyone’ll be distracted.”
“I wonder if Paula’s seen fireworks.”
“She’ll see them tonight. From the boat. Just get to the boat.”
“Okay.”
“You’ll have to wade out into the surf a bit.”
“It’ll be cold.”
“It’ll be cold, but when you get to the boat, they’ll have blankets and boots and all.”
“For Paula too?”
“For Paula too.”
“What about my laptop?”
“Take it. You won’t have to swim, but put it in a ziplock or something. My uncle must have one in the kitchen. When you get where you’re going, keep writing. Your story isn’t over. Right?”
“Right. I need to write the prologue.”
He started to leave, then he came back and we held each other like lovers at the airport, and he whispered into my hair, “This is gonna sound lame.”
“What?”
He put his lips to my ear. “I fucking love you, Rory Miller.”
I looked into his eyes. “I fucking love you too, Chase Mason.”
He stepped back and brushed the hair out of his big brown eyes. “See you on the other side.”
And he left.
I can’t wait to see my mother, and Aunt Lill, and Chase again, and to feel safe, and right, and, well, not normal, but not this.
After Chase left, Paula appeared at the stairs. By the way she was grinning, I figured she’d heard a fair bit of our conversation.
“We are going to be