Run, Rose, Run(11)

Ruthanna looked at him in surprise, and he froze. Had he crossed a line? Ruthanna had a legendary temper, and few people could get away with talking to her like that. What on earth made him think he was one of them?

“I’m sorr—” he began, and then she threw a kitchen towel at him, hitting him squarely in the chest.

“For your information, I take all of those things as a compliment,” she said.

He let out a sigh of relief. “That’s good,” he said. “Because I meant them that way.”

“I still don’t care about your singer, though,” she said. Then her face brightened and she held up a finger. “Wait—I’ve got it: Martin Scorsese!”

“I thought you said you were done,” Ethan moaned, as Ruthanna laughed all the way down to the recording room.





Chapter

10



AnnieLee woke at dawn to the sound of voices. She was frigid and sore from sleeping on the ground, but she held herself perfectly still, not even breathing as she strained to listen. How close were they?

And more importantly, were they coming closer?

She could hear a man and a woman, the latter saying something about an “EDP” she’d talked down off a bridge the day before: “…couldn’t convince him I wasn’t the ghost of his dead aunt,” she said. “Dude was whiter than a bedsheet and he’s got a Black aunt? I doubt it. But being confused about who I was had to be the least of his problems, poor thing.”

They were definitely getting closer, and AnnieLee didn’t have to know what an EDP was to know that they weren’t just a nice couple out for a morning stroll. They were cops. She could hear the swagger in the male cop’s voice as he talked about tracking down a man suspected of holding up a Circle K.

AnnieLee quickly slithered out of her sleeping bag and tried to stuff it into her pack as she ducked into the bushes to hide. She was about to get down on her hands and knees to crawl deeper into the greenery when the man said, “Hold up there.”

AnnieLee cursed under her breath as she slowly turned around, straightening the backpack on her shoulders. Maybe they’d think she was out for a sunrise walk?

“Good morning, officers,” she said, trying to keep the tremor from her voice.

In the branches above her, a crow coughed out three loud, hoarse squawks. AnnieLee glanced up at the shiny black bird, bobbing near the treetop, and then looked back at the cops, who’d failed to wish her a good morning in return.

“Did you know that crows are songbirds?” she asked. “That always seems kinda funny to me, because they have such terrible voices.” She shrugged in a way that she hoped seemed both innocent and charming. Maybe she could pass as a slightly eccentric urban birder? “A thrush, on the other hand,” she said, “sounds like some kind of magical flu—”

“You spend the night here?” the man interrupted. He stood with his legs spread wide and his thumbs tucked into his belt.

“Welllll…” AnnieLee said. Wasn’t it obvious?

“Sleeping in the park is illegal,” he said.

The woman took a step closer to her. She had a cup of steaming coffee, and it smelled so good and warm that it nearly brought tears to AnnieLee’s eyes. “There’s a shelter on Lafayette Street,” she said gently. “The Rescue Mission—are you familiar with it?”

“Um, okay, sure,” AnnieLee said, taking a corresponding step backward. She saw the other cop scanning the ground, probably looking for needles or bottles of cheap liquor.

“I don’t do drugs,” she blurted, and then flushed. “I’m not from here,” she added. But that was probably obvious, too.

“Are you okay?” the woman asked. “Do you need help?”

“Yes,” AnnieLee said. “No. I mean, I’m just fine. I’ll be moving along, I guess, if that’s okay with you.” She took another small step away from them.

The cops looked at each other—they clearly didn’t consider her a threat to herself or others—and when they turned back to her, she gave them a little wave. She’d take their silence as permission to get the hell out of there. “Thanks, and, um, have fun patrolling,” she said, and then she hurried away, holding her breath until she was safely out of sight. They didn’t call after her.

It’s your lucky day, kid, she said to herself. And then she tried very hard to believe it.





Chapter

11



AnnieLee walked south through the park for a quarter mile before she came to a long, sloping lawn. To her left was the slow-moving river, and on the far side of it, Nissan Stadium. To her right, up the hill, was a row of brick buildings, including one that said GEORGE JONES COUNTRY in big white letters. She headed up the lawn toward the city’s edge, singing to herself Jones’s “These Days (I Barely Get By),” a bleak song if there ever was one.

In a little café on Commerce Street, she spent three precious dollars on the largest coffee on offer, adding a big splash of cream and four packets of sugar. She didn’t actually like her coffee that way, but she needed all the free calories she could get.

Then she brushed her teeth in the café bathroom and tried to comb out her hair with her fingers. As she did so, she turned her face this way and that, gazing into the mirror appraisingly. Her mother used to tell her that she looked like a young Jacqueline Bisset, though AnnieLee barely knew who that actress was.