At the Quiet Edge(13)

She pulled away from the station, away from the frantic waves pouring off Amber, and away from the lights of civilization. It didn’t feel like escaping, though. It felt like being swallowed by a deep, dark mouth.

Amber’s fear had left Lily feeling vulnerable and restless. She needed to reach out to someone, so she dialed Zoey. The screaming volume of the phone blasted over her car speakers, and Lily winced, but she didn’t turn it down. She was still connected to the world, even if she felt entirely alone as she moved farther into the night.

“Lily?” Zoey answered. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine. I’m done. She . . . I mean, I’m heading home.”

“That’s good. It’s great, actually. Thank you so much.”

“Zoey . . .” She hesitated, pride warring with fear. Zoey was so brave and so indefatigable, and Lily was just . . . scared. Hiding like a wounded animal. But she was wounded, and she had a son to protect. “Zoey, I can’t do that again. I can’t put my job at risk.”

Her best friend was silent for a moment, and Lily wondered if she was nodding or frowning or rolling her eyes. After all, Zoey put her actual life on the line helping people every day, and she sometimes got exasperated with Lily’s refusal to open her life back up. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” she’d said so many times. “Get your chin up, girl!”

“I get it,” she finally responded. “I’m so sorry if I asked for too much.”

“No, it’s not that. I volunteered. Everything just felt intense this time. I got spooked. That’s all.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Lily said. And she was. She relaxed a little into her seat. “Things are normal. Everett is going to explode if he doesn’t get a phone, my class is boring but I’m pulling an A, and my love life is still nonexistent. How about you?”

Zoey chuckled, and the warm, raspy sound melted even more of Lily’s tension. “Omar’s new foster puppies are finally sleeping through the night, so I feel like Superwoman these days.”

“Congratulations! Are you still up for a cup of coffee sometime this week?”

“I’m always up for a cup of coffee.”

When they disconnected Lily felt like herself again. Tired, yes, but the normal kind of tired she always felt.

Zoey had been the first friend she’d made when she’d moved to Herriman as a little girl, and she’d been her first friend when Lily had moved back as a married woman with a tiny baby. After the police raid, Jones hadn’t been there to face the consequences, so everyone had turned on Lily. Everyone except Zoey. She knew way too much about bad husbands from running the shelter, and she understood that Lily had been another victim of Jones’s crimes.

She was amazing, and Lily wasn’t, and she couldn’t try to keep up with her friend’s bravery. She’d get back to living a safe, quiet life and keeping her damn head down, down, down.

If Everett had seen anything, it would be nothing but a curiosity now. Things were back under control, and she could keep her life in order while she figured out how to navigate the next few years.

“One more year,” she whispered to herself, pleased at the way the number had decreased to almost zero. One year and finally the foreclosure would fall off her report, she’d have her accounting degree, and she could get a better job, buy a house, and move to a real neighborhood. The bankruptcy would hang around a bit longer, but she’d have seven years of paid bills and decent credit to offset that. She could get Everett out of this town and out of this lonely apartment.

They could even take a vacation, drive all the way to the gulf, rent a little condo on a Texas beach. She’d never seen the ocean, and neither had Everett, and she wanted to show him that before it was too late. Before he grew up and moved away and told stories of the strange, isolated life she’d given him.

And he would move away. She knew that. When his father had first vanished, Everett had wailed at the idea of leaving their house and moving. “Dad will come back and we won’t be here!”

She’d cried with him, but it had been a simple grief, because she couldn’t fix the problem. After three months of missed mortgage payments, the bank had swooped in, and they’d been homeless. This job had put a roof over their heads.

But now . . . now life was more stable, and she’d lived through a few years of Everett’s complaints about “this stupid town,” and she wanted something better for him.

They were so close. Another year and she could move up instead of over. With a better credit score, she could find work in accounting, pretend the past six years hadn’t happened, and even tout her long, steady commitment to one company. One more year and they would escape this town for something better. All she had to do was not fuck it up.

The town no longer seemed as idyllic as it had when her father had moved them to Herriman, settling in his old hometown to raise a family. Lily had spent three happy years here before Dad had decided he didn’t want a wife and child anymore. Well, not the same wife and child, anyway. He’d found comfort in the arms of another woman pretty quickly, and then he’d found comfort in having two strong sons.

Her mother, barely treading the waters of emotional stability before the divorce, had needed a job and an apartment—and above all else, a new man—so she and Lily had moved to St. Louis.