Page 27 of Not Another Yesterday
“Hey Randi.” I wrap my arms around her. Still tiny.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she says into my jacket, her voice cracking. I can tell she’s crying; her small frame shakes with each sob. So I hold her against me for a few minutes, not saying a word until she finally releases me and takes a step back.
Her blue eyes are watery, red, and puffy. She’s obviously cried a lot, which is so unlike her. Miranda has experienced her share of terrible things in life, and like me, she’s developed an extraordinary ability to swallow heavy shit. Until something happens that completely unravels her.
“What happened?” I ask as she holds the door open for me to enter the small room. It’s run-down. The brown carpet is stained, and the wooden wall panels have definitely seen better days. There’s a single queen-size bed pushed against the right wall, opposite a small round table and two wooden chairs. A crappy TV is mounted to the wall across the bed, and the two lamps on the nightstands on either side of the bed are the room’s only source of light.
“Rony, I’ll explain everything, I promise. But… can we get something to eat?” she asks, looking up at me.
It dawns on me that she probably hasn’t eaten all day, seeing as she has no money. “Oh, shit. Yeah, of course.” I pull the door open again. “Do you have a jacket? It’s kind of chilly outside.”
Miranda is dressed in a pair of light blue boot-cut jeans, a white tank top—the fabric of which is so thin her black bra is clearly visible through it—covered by a red-and-black plaid flannel, but nothing else.
Miranda shakes her head. “No. He took everything. Including my clothes,” she says, despair etched into her face.
“Okay, no problem.” I shrug off my hooded leather jacket. I fully expect her to fight me on taking it, and I grin when she tries to wave me off. “Just take it, Randi.”
She relents with a sigh, then slips her arms into the too-long-for-her sleeves before walking out ahead of me.
I walk next to her, leading her to my car.
“That’s your car?” she says, admiring my satin-black Mustang.
I smile proudly while I hold the passenger door open for her. “Yep.”
“Nice,” she says before sliding into the seat.
I get into the driver’s seat a moment later. My back immediately protests the cramped conditions so soon after escaping them. “So, what do you feel like eating?” I ask as I maneuver out of the parking lot.
She melts back against the leather seat and sighs deeply. “Anything.”
“Helpful,” I say dryly. “What’s around here?”
“Not much—probably just fast food. Most places are already closed. But if I remember correctly there’s a twenty-four-hour diner in Dayton, about half an hour west of here.”
I look up the place on my phone, then start driving down the deserted highway.
It’s silent in the car. I know her well enough not to push her into talking. She’s just like me when it comes to stuff like that—we have a tendency to shut down if we’re forced to talk about crappy shit too quickly. I figure she’ll talk when she’s ready. So I just let the music play quietly in the background and wait for Miranda to make the first move.
She finally breaks the silence, though her eyes are shut. “I can’t believe you’re here.”
“You sounded pretty desperate.”
She turns her head to me but doesn’t respond to my comment. “When did you get back to New York?”
I briefly meet her gaze before focusing back on the road. “Mid-April.”
“Did you end up testifying at the trial?”
My chest tightens at the recollection. Those ten hours of being in the same room as my mother, talking about all the beatings I took and watching a year’s worth of surveillance of every time she hurt me cracked me wide open. “Yeah.”
“I’m sorry, Rony. I bet that sucked.”
“It did,” I say with a nod. “But it was also cathartic.”
Her lips tug into a smile. “I told you you needed to talk about it. Remember what I said: it sucks in the moment, but afterwards you—”
“Feel a little bit lighter.”
