at the tavern until at least 2 a.m. Then he’d have the task of kicking out the stubborn drunks who always wanted “just one more”, on top of the mean drunks who didn’t give a flying fuck what time it was.
I was really counting on the mean drunks tonight.
I’d be long gone before 2 a.m., but that wasn’t enough. I wanted to get to my destination and settle in quietly before Randall even had a chance to hit the road looking for me.
And he would come looking for me.
The drive was three and a half hours. In that amount of time, I could make it to east Nashville. One of my old “foster-sisters”, Emily, had promised me a job at the fast-food place she managed, and she’d given me the names and rates of some nearby roadside motels.
It wasn’t a forever plan, but it was a plan. I could make it happen.
The only thing that was going to happen here was my accidental death when Randall broke the wrong bone, punctured the wrong organ, or just got mad enough to outright shoot me.
I couldn’t tell yet if he would ever truly, purposely kill me, but there was really only one way to find that out for sure. The knowledge would be useless when I was dead.
I knew his rage well enough at this point to fear that he might instead kill me “in the heat of passion”. That was what lawyers called it. The heat of fucking passion.
I’d had enough passion.
I’d go by my middle name. Anne Johnson would probably be able to stay pretty incognito until she figured out a better, more permanent plan. If I could save enough money for a passport and bus tickets, I was considering Canada.
I didn’t think Randall’s rage would have enough steam to send him over the border, and he’d never pull his shit together long enough to obtain his own passport.
When I got to Nashville, I planned to dye my hair and cut it short. Randall had threatened to kill me if I ever cut it at all. He said it was because it was “so goddamn beautiful”, but I thought it probably had more to do with the fact that it made the perfect handle when he wanted to hold me still and hurt me.
He often wanted to hurt me.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I wasn’t allowed to work at the tavern like I had before moving in with him. He said I didn’t need the money. He’d take care of me. Instead, I’d been siphoning off a few dollars here, a few dollars there when he sent me out for groceries.
I’d kept the money in a box of tampons, rolled up inside a wrapper. It wasn’t fool proof by any means, but there was nowhere else to hide it. Randall kept his eye on everything.
A tampon box was about the only thing I could think of that he wouldn’t touch, and I wasn’t even 100% sure about that, either.
Randall had bought me a Toyota Camry that dated back to the late nineties, specifically so I could run errands and bring him lunch at work. I wasn’t actually allowed to go into the tavern anymore. I had to sit in the car until he showed.
He didn’t want me to have friends. Then I might tell someone the things he did to me, and he wasn’t going to let that happen. Everyone laughed at the fact that pay phones still existed, but they’d been my saving grace as far as getting in touch with Emily.
The car barely ran, but it ran. Randall had threatened to set it on fire at least fifty times in the last year. He never did though. Then he’d have to let me drive his fancy truck – the one that cost more than his trailer – or resort to getting groceries himself.
Neither of those two things were ever going to happen.
A check-out clerk had asked me once, in a very low whisper, if I was okay? Did I need any help? Was there anything she could do? She’d been probably about the age my mom would have been if she hadn’t died, but she cared ten thousand times more about my welfare than my mom ever had.
That particular day, one of my eyes had been nearly swollen shut. I’d smiled, laughed, and made some crack about my clumsiness. I knew she didn’t believe me. I also knew it didn’t matter.
If Randall found out I had talked to