Page 2 of The Sea-Mist Cottage Inn
The only way to get clear of her mother and know she couldn’t be dragged back to her hellish clutches was if no one—no one—had any sliver of information about where she’d gone. She couldn’t tell anyone now, and she could never reach out in the future.
She sat in Jessie’s wonderful, ridiculous old car and tried to maintain the ruse, singing and seat-dancing along with her friend to the music blaring from her stereo. The song was “This Is the Day,” by The The, which was so on point it pierced her heart, but she kept bouncing and singing with her friend as if the only unusual thing about this day was graduation.
At the sign for the Sea-Mist Cottage Inn, the Braddock family business, Jessie pulled onto the shoulder of Highway 101 and parked. She didn’t go up the lane, onto the property, becauseLeonora’s mother had made it extremely clear that Leonora’s friends were not welcome there.
Jessie put the car in park but didn’t cut the engine. She thought she was simply dropping her friend off, like she’d done hundreds of times before.
“Do you think you can get out tomorrow? Mom wants to do a brunch for us.”
Finding she couldn’t just breezily sayI’ll sure try!and get out of the car like it was any other night, Leonora turned the stereo down. “I really love you and Erin. You’ve always been more like sisters to me than just friends.”
Jessie’s brows drew together, and she laughed a little. “Well, sure. I feel the same way about you guys. And Erin does, too. We say it often enough. We’re the Three Fates!”
“I know. I just ... I don’t know. I guess because ... graduation and everything ... I just needed to say it now.”
“Oh, get in here, you dork.” Jessie lunged across the bench seat of her classic Challenger and snatched Leonora into a hug.
Leonora held on like it was the last hug she’d ever get from her dear friend.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Jessie smacked a loud kiss to her cheek and pushed back. “Everybody’s so sappy today! Like the whole world’s about to change just because we finished high school. But big whoop! I promise, tomorrow is gonna be pretty much like every Saturday we ever had—with the addition of brunch. You need mimosas and crepes, so try to break out of the gulag tomorrow, okay?”
There was nothing Leonora could do but keep the lie going. “I’ll see what I can do.”
She got out of the car and watched Jessie make a U-turn and head back to the party. She waved, and Jessie stuck her hand out the window and waved carelessly back.
Now alone, Leonora gave herself permission for a silent cry as she trudged up the lane, along the edge of the gravel parking lot, past the cabin that had until now had been her only home, and around to the woods in back. Two of the guest cabins were occupied and the lights were on, so she stayed in the shadows and skulked carefully to the equipment shed. She eased into its dark recesses and grabbed the backpack she’d hidden there a few days earlier.
A second pair of jeans. A pair of denim cutoffs. Six pairs of underpants and six pairs of socks. Three bras. Four t-shirts. Two flannel shirts. Toiletries. A packet of hair ties. Her journal and a box of off-brand gel pens. A year’s worth of savings in cash: $876. That and what she currently had on—jeans, underwear, her senior-class t-shirt, a zip-up hoodie, her jean jacket, and her Converse knock-offs—now constituted everything she had in the world.
Outside again, she slipped the pack onto her shoulders, clipped the chest strap, and started walking. Back to the highway and away from this life.
Her plan was simple: to walk the twenty miles to the nearest Greyhound station and take the bus going as far away as she could afford to get. From wherever that was, she’d figure out what her life could be.
Anything would be better than the one she was leaving.
PRESENT DAY
Home is the place where when you go there, you finally face the thing in the dark.
~ Stephen King,It
ONE: Bears at the Gate
As I steered around the familiar turn on US 101, a fresh burst of anxious adrenaline showered my synapses. I took a long, deep, quiet breath and steadied myself again—tried to, anyway.
Every mile closer to our destination was another turn of the ratchet, tightening the muscles through my neck and shoulders, but this next milestone soured my belly and sped my heart.
“Oh, cool!” Wyatt exclaimed from the passenger seat of the fifteen-foot U-Haul I’d muscled across the country for the past week. “Are they real gold?”
A pair of golden bears stood guard at either side of the entrance to the bridge over the Klamath River. Though I hadn’t seen them in almost twenty years, before that, they’d been so much a part of my world I’d stopped noticing them.
Now, glinting in the rich light of the evening’s golden hour, they loomed large and terrible, menacing sentries of the past I’d fled and harbingers of a future I’d tried to escape.
“No, not gold,” I answered my son as the bears slipped past. “Just paint.”
Wyatt focused on the side mirror to watch the bears disappear behind us. “Still cool, though.”
