I also didn’t wipe my skin where he’d touched it.
In bed beside Brie, I stared up at the dark ceiling and hated the fact that my body remembered the warmth of his hand. Hated it because memory is the first loose thread, and loose threads are how your whole life comes apart if you let people close enough.
Maybe that was why my mind dragged me backward.
Back to Gerald Thornton’s foster house outside Billings. Back to the locked kitchen cabinet with the four-digit code only he knew. Back to the little spiral notebook where he kept count of bread slices, peanut butter scoops, cheese by the ounce. Back to learning how to move slower on days when there weren’t enough calories in me to feel like a person. Back to hiding granola bars in my pillowcase and apples in my school bag like stolen diamonds.
I left that house at sixteen with thirty-four dollars sewn into the lining of my shoe and a torn backpack over one shoulder. I walked seven miles to the bus station before dawn and bought a ticket to Whitehall because it was the farthest place thirty-four dollars could carry me.
Everything I had now, every board in that cabin, every canned bean, every inch of safety my daughter slept inside, had started with those thirty-four dollars.
That number lived in me like scripture.
The next morning I had to go into town for supplies. We were running low on gauze, peroxide, rice, pretty much everything, because an extra adult body eats through a single mother’s pantry faster than disaster usually does.
Before I left, I crouched in front of Brie.
“Lock the door after me. Don’t open it unless it’s me or Bonnie.”
She nodded.
Then I looked at Reed.
He looked back.
No words, but the agreement sat there between us just fine. He would stay put. My daughter would remain untouched by whatever world he came from. I would be quick.
It took forty-five minutes through knee-deep snow to get to Gus Whitfield’s general store. The bell above the door gave its tired jingle when I pushed inside. The place smelled like old coffee, oil, dog food, and winter coats that had known a hundred storms. Gus stood behind the counter with his reading glasses low on his nose, newspaper open. At his feet, Colonel slept beside the stove, three legs tucked under him, cloudy eye half closed.
I grabbed what we needed fast. Gauze. Peroxide. Rice. Canned beans. Bread. A little canned meat if I stretched the week somewhere else.
As I set it on the counter, my eyes landed on the landline behind Gus.
A live phone.
A real one.
The first easy chance I’d had to call for official help since Reed bled onto my floor.
Gus followed my gaze and tipped his chin toward it.
I walked around the counter, picked up the receiver, and listened to the clear dial tone hum against my ear.
Then I just stood there.
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