Juniper Hill (The Edens #2)
Devney Perry
CHAPTER ONE
MEMPHIS
“Juniper Hill. Juniper Hill.” I plucked the sticky note from the cupholder to double-check that I had the correct street name. Juniper Hill. “There. Is. No.
Juniper. Hill.”
My palm smacked on the steering wheel, adding a whack with each word. Frustration seeped from my pores as I desperately scanned the road for a street sign.
Drake screamed in his car seat, that wailing, heartbreaking, red-faced scream. How could a noise so loud come from such a small person?
“I’m sorry, baby. We’re almost there.” We had to be close, right? This miserable trip had to end.
Drake cried and cried, not giving a damn about my apology. He was only eight weeks old, and while this trip had been hard on me, for him it was probably akin to torture.
“I’m screwing everything up, aren’t I?”
Maybe I should have waited and made this trip when he was older. Maybe I should have stayed in New York and dealt with the bullshit. Maybe I should have made a hundred different choices. A thousand.
After days in the car, I’d begun questioning my every decision, especially this one.
Escaping the city had seemed like the best option. But now . . .
Drake’s scream said otherwise.
It seemed like a decade ago that I’d packed up my life—
our life—and loaded it into my car. Once, I’d been a girl who’d grown up in a mansion. A girl who’d had a private jet at her disposal. The realization that the only possessions truly mine would fit into a Volvo sedan was . . . humbling.
But I’d made my choice. And it was too late to turn back now.
Thousands of miles and we’d finally made it to Quincy.
The site of our fresh start. Or it would be if I could find Juniper Hill.
My ears were ringing. My heart was aching. “Shh. Baby.
We’re almost there.”
Neither did he understand nor care. He was hungry and needed a diaper change. I’d planned to do it all when we arrived at our rental, but this was the third time I’d driven this stretch of road.
Lost. We were lost in Montana.
We’d come all this way and were lost. Maybe we’d been lost since the morning I’d driven out of the city. Maybe I’d been lost for years.
I swiped up my phone and checked the GPS. My new boss had warned me that this road wasn’t on a map yet so she’d given me directions instead. Maybe I’d written them down wrong.
Drake’s tiny voice cracked. The crying stopped for a split second so he could refill his lungs, then he just kept on wailing. Through the rearview and the mirror above his seat, his little face was scrunched and flushed and his fists balled.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered as tears blurred my vision. They fell down my cheeks and I couldn’t swipe them away fast enough.
Don’t give up.
My own sob escaped, joining my son’s, and I eased off the highway for the shoulder.
But God, I wanted to quit. How long could a person hold on to the end of their rope before their grip slipped? How long could a woman hold herself together before she cracked?
Apparently, the answer was from New York to Montana. We were probably only a mile from our final destination and the walls were beginning to crumble.
A sob mixed with a hiccup and the tears flowed until my tires were stopped, the car was in park and I was hugging the steering wheel, wishing it could hug me back.
Don’t give up.
If it was only me, I would have given up months ago. But Drake was counting on me to endure. He’d survive this, right?
He’d never know that we’d spent a miserable few days in the car. He’d never know that for the first two months of his life, I’d cried nearly every day. He’d never know that today, the day when we’d started what I hoped would be a happy life, had actually been the fifth-worst day of his mother’s life.
Don’t give up.
I squeezed my eyes shut, giving in to the sobs for a minute.
I blindly felt along the door, hitting the button to roll down the
windows. Maybe some clean air would chase away the stink of too many days in the car.
“I’m sorry, Drake,” I murmured as he continued to cry. As we both cried. “I’m sorry.”
A better mother would probably get out of the car. A better mother would hold her son, feed him and change him. But then I’d have to load him into his car seat again and he’d cry, like he had for the first hour of our trip this morning.
Maybe he’d be better off with a different mother. A mother who wouldn’t have made him travel across the country.
He deserved a better mother. And a better father.
We had that in common.
“Miss?”
I gasped, nearly jumping out of my seat belt as a woman’s voice cut through the noise.
“Sorry.” The officer, a pretty woman with dark hair, held up her hands.
“Oh my God.” I slapped a hand to my heart as the other shoved a lock of hair from my face. In the rearview, I spotted the familiar blue and red lights of a police car. Shit. The last thing I needed was a ticket.
“I’m sorry, Officer. I can move my car.”
“It’s all right.” She leaned in, peeking inside my car. “Is everything okay?”