sky in a mason jar before it went away altogether. She had learned early and well not to count on things that beautiful stickin’ around.
“Gonna be dark by the time we hit Port Townsend,” Moira said, nestling the bundle back in her lap.
Port Townsend.
Moira had ducked into one of the gift shops at the airport soon after she’d arrived. Right after she’d eaten a cinnamon roll that nearly restored her faith in Jesus. Leafing through the pages of an Atlas with still-sticky fingers, she’d gotten a nasty paper cut on the Washington Coast.
One single drop of blood fell, and Moira watched in horrified fascination as it dripped up the page, and with jerky strokes, circled Port Townsend.
Startled, stunned, and weak-kneed, Moira had spent half of all she had left in the world to satisfy the pencil-eyebrowed clerk behind the counter. But for her insistence that Moira ought not touch what she couldn’t afford, she might have torn the page out and walked away.
It would be a couple hours before they landed in Seattle, and there would be a couple more that would need driven after that.
And then there was a driver to consider. Mostly, that she’d need one.
Exhaustion settled over Moira, draining what little reserve she had left. She couldn’t think about that just now. She couldn’t think about anything.
Especially not about Nick.
5
“I’d rather suck off a truck driver.” And so she had.
Moira’s parting words to Nick circled her brain as she stood out in the street in front of a building that looked less like a house and more like a layer cake.
Three stories, each painted a different color, the ornate woodwork so delicate in contrast to the tin-roofed shacks of her hometown, they looked as fragile as spun sugar. Even the windows, glowing golden like butterscotch candy from lamps within, looked like something right out of a storybook.
Things didn’t end well for kids who ran across candy houses, the way Moira remembered it.
The strap of her duffel bag dug into her shoulder, a reminder of what had coaxed those flippant words from her lips in the first place.
Nick had waited for her. Had pulled down her battered old duffel bag from the compartment where she’d left it when she stormed off. The man stood there with it slung over his shoulder like a soldier going off to war.
“I’ll carry this out to my car for you. My driver will take you where you need to go.”
Spoken in anyone else’s voice, it would have sounded like an offer.
Coming from him it was an order.
She wasn’t in the habit of taking them.
And riding the Ray Dean Express wasn’t a purely opportunistic move on her part. Poor Ray, the Seattle truck driver who had picked her up just outside the airport, hadn’t ever grieved the murder of his mother. Two hours and fifty-six miles later, he’d finished grieving for momma, a handful of dead pets, and a high school sweetheart who’d run off with his best friend.
Moira took another breath of air heavy with salt and sea. Just as dense as what she was accustomed to, but cool and clammy. They were practically a hound’s sneeze from the ocean. She could feel it in her bones.
Just as she could feel whatever was in that house, pulling her like the moon pulled the tides.
And yet, here she stood. Frozen.
She had gone as far as to imagine walking up those tidy steps, standing on the wrap-around porch, and knocking on the door when she stopped.
She’d grown up on the other side of those kinds of doors. Had them slammed in her face. Been thrown out of more of them than she cared to remember.
What if she had come all this way just to have another one closed on her?
The thought stirred up a hollow ache that brought her attention to the chill creeping into her skin. Her cut-offs, tank top, and flip-flops were keeping the cold out about as well as fishing net kept away gnats.
A small sneeze from her shoulder bag finally set her feet to moving. It was one thing for her to set out in the cold. Another thing altogether for her baby to suffer.
“All right,” she said at last. “Let’s get this over with.”
Out of the street, across the sidewalk, and up the steps she marched, pausing only for a moment to snort at the wreath of dried weeds affixed to the front door. She’d seen them used for a lot of things in her day, but never for