Page 63 of Runaways

I shake my head. "No."

"Do you know where you are?"

"No."

"This town is called Winter Falls. You're in Northern Washington. You running from somebody?"

"What? N-no. I'm not—"

"Did a boyfriend do this to you?"

My lip quivers, my eyes fill with tears, and before I can stop myself, I start to cry.

"Shh," the woman says, wrapping her arms around me. "It's all right. You got anyone you can go to? Anyone we can call?"

I shake my head. "He's going to kill me," I cry.

"No one's going to kill you," she says. "You're okay now. Come on out here; when was the last time you ate?"

When was the last time I…no.

"We've got fresh cherry pie," she adds.

Soft, cooked cherries in thick, congealed pie filling. My stomach retches at the thought.

"I'm not hungry right now," I tell her. "But if I could just rest somewhere, I would appreciate it."

"Can you make it up a staircase on that ankle of yours?" she asks.

I nod. "Yeah."

"All right, come on," she says, and I follow her out of the bathroom. "I'm Jodie, by the way. I own this place and the house behind it. There's an apartment over my garage that's empty right now—tenant broke the lease. You can rest there. What's your name?"

"Um—"

"Make it good. You only get to pick once."

"Delilah," I say, giving her the name from the fake ID Silas and Tate made for me last year.

"It's a lot," Jodie says, holding the front door for me. "Can I call you Lilah?"

"Yeah, Lilah's fine."

I follow her through the parking lot and toward the white farmhouse-style home, which must belong to her. To its left sits a separate two-car garage that appears to have been converted from a barn, and behind that is a wooden staircase leading to a single red door.

I follow her up those stairs and then through that door to a sparsely furnished studio apartment. There's a bed, a dresser, and a kitchenette with a microwave and stovetop. A chandelier hangs from the vaulted ceiling, refracting sunlight from the only window into intricate patterns on the white walls.

"It's nice." I cross the room and sit on the bed.

"Thank you. I built this place for my daughter after she graduated so she could have some privacy. She moved away about ten years ago and died in a car accident a couple of years after that."

"I'm so sorry—"

"It gets hot up here in the afternoon," Jodie says, ignoring my attempt at sympathy. "You can open the window if you want. The bathroom is just through there, and that's the entire tour. There's nothing in the fridge, but there's running water and there should be some ice in the freezer. When you get hungry, just come down to the café, and we'll get you something to eat."

"I don't have any money."

"I'm not asking you for money, sweetheart—not now, anyway. But when you're feeling better, if you want to stay for a little while—just until you get back on your feet—you're going to have to work it off, and we could use the help down there. Have you ever waited tables before?"

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