Chapter 3
Ember's POV
I waited until the clatter of pot lids in the kitchen stopped, waited until my grandmother turned off the last light, waited until the only thing left in the hallway was the sound of my father's snoring slipping out through the gap under the door, and only then did I push my mother's door open, slowly, without a sound.
She hadn't gone to sleep yet. The bedside lamp was on, and she was sitting on the edge of the bed with a mug in her hands, her head down, as if she were counting the tea leaves at the bottom of the cup.
I pulled the door shut behind me and sat down beside her.
"Is there anyone else in that house?" I asked, straight out.
She raised her eyes, looked at my face for a second, then set the cup down. "He has a son."
Something in my chest tightened.
"How old?"
"A year older than you. 17 years"
I didn't say anything. There was wind outside, and it knocked the tin shed in the yard once, softly, then went quiet again. A son — I didn't know what kind of temper he had, I didn't know whether he'd make things hard for her, I didn't know whether she could hold up over there on her own.
"Mom," I said. "I'm not okay with you going alone."
She tapped the back of my hand with two fingers, just that, very brief, like checking that I was still there. "I know you worry about me."
"That's not the same thing." I looked up at her. "I mean I'm really worried. You're the kind of person who, when somebody hands you a glass of water, thanks them over and over and can't even bring herself to finish it in one go. A place like that, people like that — do you have any idea how they'll treat you?"
She didn't answer right away. The lamp lit the side of her face softly; there were fine lines at the corners of her eyes, and her mouth was slack in that way that only comes from holding a lot of things down inside for a long time. She looked at me, and something in her eyes was moving.
"Ember," she said. "I'm not asking you to carry this for me."
"But I'm carrying it." The words came out before I'd finished thinking them.
She let out a slow breath. "I know you don't want to go. You have friends here, you have places you know —"
"I didn't say I'm not going." I cut her off before she could finish.
She stopped.
I turned my hand over and hooked my fingers around hers. Her hands were cold, the knuckles thin, the skin dry — the hands of someone who'd worked for years, and not hands that should have had to.
"I'll go with you," I said. "Don't go over there alone."
Her hand moved once in my palm, and then closed tight. She didn't cry. She never cries. But she lowered her head a little, as if she needed a second to let something settle back into place.
I didn't cry either. I just sat there, listening to the wind hit the tin shed again, thinking about a place called Oakhaven, about a house number I didn't even know, about a boy a year older than me who I'd never met.
I don't know what kind of person he is. But I'll be there.
The next few days went fast, fast like somebody ripping pages off a calendar and dropping them on the floor.
My mother packed everything she could take into two suitcases and left the rest. She chose calmly, as if she had long since decided which things were worth carrying and which had never belonged to her to begin with.
My box was packed full; I pressed it down and pressed it again, and in the end I had to kneel on the lid to get the zipper closed.
My father sat in the yard smoking. He looked at us once and didn't say anything.
My grandmother said a lot. I didn't take in a single word of it.
Wade and his mother Dinah came the morning we left.
Wade was the friend I'd grown up with, a year older than me, out of school a long time ago, working shifts at the gas station at the edge of town and picking up odd tech jobs when there was work.
Dinah stood in the doorway with a bag in her hand and pushed it into my mother's hands, saying, "Something for the road," and that was the end of it; she wasn't a woman who made long speeches.
Wade stood beside her in a work jacket, hair uncombed, a head taller than me, his eyes lowered as he watched me drag my luggage. He didn't say anything. He waited until I'd hauled the box up onto the step, then reached out, took it, and set it down beside the car waiting at the curb.
"That far," he said, flat, not like a question. "That's all the luggage you've got?"
"It's enough."
He grunted and said nothing more.
Dinah pulled me over and, with those hands of hers that did care work, held my shoulders firmly and looked me up and down. She didn't give me any big speech. She said one thing —
"People like that don't give you anything without a bill. Watch yourself."
I nodded. She patted my shoulder and let go.
We took the only bus in town that ran to the county seat; the foam padding was leaking out of the side seams of the seats, wind poured in through the gaps in the windows, and the whole frame bounced every time we went over a pothole.
My mother set the bag on her lap and turned to look out the window, and the streets of Black Creek slid backward through the glass — the gas station, the abandoned coal plant, the old tree by the road that lightning had split halfway through.
I stared at that tree until it dropped out of sight.
We changed to a long-haul bus at the county seat, then changed again, and rode for most of a day. I didn't sleep. I couldn't. The mountains outside kept rising, the vegetation kept thickening, the sky kept sinking, clouds piled on the ridgelines — thick, low, like something held in too long.
My mother fell asleep beside me, her head against the window frame, her breathing light and even. I watched her for a while and laid my jacket over her shoulders.
It was the first time I'd ever gone this far from home.
Outside, it began to rain. Fine, slanted, silent on the glass. The driver had the high beams on, and the far ridgeline had already disappeared; there was nothing but rain and streetlights and the taillights of the car ahead glowing in the black.
The weather's turning.
I leaned my head back against the seat and closed my eyes, listening to the rain and the tires mixing together, something in my chest hanging in midair, unable to fall and unable to be pulled back.
Whatever was over there, I was already on the road.
