Page 79 of There I Find Rest

Chapter 1

Jubilee’s car sputtered.

You have got to be kidding me.

She didn’t open her mouth because her two daughters, Scarlett and Penelope, sat in the backseat. They’d been driving for twelve hours, and they were both exhausted.

Her car sputtered again and her fingers tightened on the steering wheel.

Please, Lord. Just ten more miles.

She glanced at the gas gauge, which showed it to have about a sixteenth of a tank, just slightly above the bottom Empty line.

That was one sixteenth, wasn’t it?

Maybe that was wishful thinking.

“Mom is the car going to break down?” Scarlett said from her position behind Jubilee’s seat.

“I hope not,” Jubilee gave her the honest answer.

“I hope it does. I’m sick of sitting in here.” Penelope, eight, never hesitated to speak her mind.

She wanted to tell Penelope to keep her hopes to herself, because if their car broke down, it was going to be a very long time before Jubilee’s day was over, and considering that twelve hours of driving would wear out anyone, she was ready for the day to be over. Ready for the week to be over. Ready for her life... She didn’t want to think that, so she pulled those words back into her brain.

Truly, she didn’t think things could get any worse. She wondered how long she was going to be living at the bottom, where things couldn’t get any worse.

The car sputtered one more time, then the engine died.

All right, so when the gas gauge was just a little bit above the line, it didn’t mean that there was one sixteenth of a gallon tank left. It meant that the little arrow couldn’t go any lower.

At least the highway was wide and flat, unlike some of the hills that they’d been driving in earlier that day as they left Pennsylvania.

Those roads had a tendency to be winding and narrow, with high bridges that took her breath away, and made her want to close her eyes.

Michigan was much different. Especially here along the lake. Strawberry Sands was just ten miles or so away, and it was right on the shore of Lake Michigan.

Lord, I was hoping we would make it. I thought you were going to help us get there. Wasn’t that the deal? I would put everything I had into it, if you would just get us to Strawberry Sands.

She hadn’t been sure at the time if God was really making that deal with her, or if she just really wanted the change of pace herself.

Strawberry Sands was one of the few happy memories she had from her childhood, a place of peace and comfort. A place where neighbors cared about each other, and where it was safe to walk the streets. A place she’d like to raise her girls. Now that she finally left her cheating husband.

There is no point in thinking about that now. Currently, she had a problem sitting in front of her that she was going to have to solve before she got to go to bed tonight. If she even got to go to bed. After all, she wouldn’t have run out of gas if she would have had the money to fill up her tank back in Blueberry Beach, when they passed the last gas station.

She’d been hoping to get to Strawberry Sands, hoping to get a job. Hoping to... She didn’t know. She really didn’t have plans for tonight, which probably showed what a terrible parent she actually was. But, in a place like Strawberry Sands, they could sleep in their car, they could sleep along the beach, either place would be just as safe as sleeping in a two-story house with a white picket fence in the middle of small-town USA.

Still, normal adults didn’t plan to house their children in their car for any length of time, even just one night.

Maybe she would have been better off staying with her husband.

Or at the very least, staying with her mother-in-law. Which was where she moved when she found out that her husband had been cheating.

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