Under the big aluminum domes—a bounty. There are fluffy mounds of scrambled eggs, shiny sausage links, a bacon extravaganza. Annabelle wraps up a few bagels and muffins in napkins and puts them in her backpack. She learned this trick from Grandpa Ed, who always makes her put the extra rolls in her purse when they go out to eat. There is an array of sliced fruit laid out like a sunrise. Orange slices go in her pack, too. There are little boxes of cereal and jars of granola.
The abundance makes her feel hopeful, and so does her charged phone, and the pink-yellow light of morning. She thinks: It’s going to be a beautiful day. Annabelle has not had that thought for almost a year now. She realizes that there have been other days when the pink-yellow light of morning made everything look hopeful, but not to her. She despised those days for their wrongness. Now, even a parking lot and out-of-state license plates and strip malls in the distance wink with hope. She feels the slightest opening inside of herself. She allows a little light in. This sounds like a religious card, but she doesn’t care.
Annabelle stretches. Legs up, legs out. Bend down; reach. She’s not as sore as she thought she’d be after yesterday. She feels great, actually. It’s like she already left something behind. Not it all, of course, she knows better than that. That is something that will never happen, her whole life long. Just something. One tiny piece, which is a large enough event to occur, given her circumstances.
She takes a big gulp of misty March loveliness. The air is deliciously damp. Annabelle spots the arrowheads of bulbs poking up in the landscaping. A Renton squirrel scurries up the gate of the motel swimming pool, closed for the season. Spring, renewal, life! Sure, this—this expansiveness—has something to do with the recent joy of consuming bacon (she shouldn’t have had that much salt), but it’s also from the road ahead. The road ahead. Is this where the magic is? That she is, for once, not looking behind?
She is still in front of the Best Western, where it is very easy to be optimistic.
In fact, after this moment, she won’t be this optimistic for a long, long time.
• • •
The slap-sound of her feet on pavement is familiar. Even way back when That Bastard Father Anthony lived with them, when she was just a kid, Annabelle would run circles in their backyard as he timed her with the stopwatch he kept in his gym bag. In elementary school, she raced around at recess, and it was all about speed, how fast she could go, the feel of her ponytail flying out behind her. Later, in junior high, after her father left and her name went from Annabelle Agnelli-Manutto to just Annabelle Agnelli, there were a lot of things to run from. Money problems; Malcolm in that bad spell where he peed his bed; Dad driving to the house to pick them up, and then driving away again after he and Gina argued. Dad spending less and less time with them, and how this hurt but was also somehow easier.
Annabelle started counting things then—ceiling tiles, sidewalk squares, and consonants in words. Steps. Strides. She went from speed to distance. Back in junior high, she learned that the long-distance run, tiring herself out, soothing herself with the rhythm of pace, helped the anxiety. It was like driving a screaming baby around in a car.
Back then, a three-mile cross-country event was huge. It still is—in high school, she made state. But after cross-country season ended in early November, she also just ran for herself the rest of the year. To stay in shape, but also for the nature-connectedness-science-y beauty all around outside and for the overachiever challenge of distance. Half marathons. Two marathons, just before her life went up in flames. And after it did, weeks after, when she could finally get up out of bed again, she put on her shoes. She went outside and ran. She ran until she was exhausted. She ran fast enough to blur the scenery in her mind.
When she did this, she discovered another trick. If she goes far and runs hard enough, her body hurts. She’d done this week after week even before now. Inflicting pain on herself. Punishment. That sounds a little sicko, but too bad. It is what it is. She wishes the punishment were more brutal, even though it’s pretty bad already and, thanks to Seth Greggory, about to get worse. Along with the punishment, she’s also doing the thing she most wants to do: flee.
Now, on this first day of her long journey, she is running along Lake Washington Boulevard again, but this time on the east side of the lake. The lake is pink-tinged with morning, and she can see the freeway beyond, and the cars lining up in their commute. School starts in just over an hour. Her seats will sit empty. People will wonder. People will worry. People will become uneasy. She shouldn’t even be in school anyway. Why they let her come back is beyond her. Every day, she makes people uneasy. They look at her like she’s got a bomb strapped to her chest.
To the east, straight through those hills packed with evergreens, is her destination for the day: Preston, Washington. The route ahead is filled with enticing Westward Ho! names: the Coal Mines Trail, the Bullitt Fireplace Trail, the Rainier Trail. Honestly, it looks a little dark out that way. It looks ominous, like the deep forests of fairy tales. Fear crawls up her spine.
You will not be weak, she tells herself. You will not think about Seth Greggory and the future. You will not imagine jails and handcuffs. The lecture evolves into a list of commandments: You will not count all the miles that are left. You will not be terrified. You will not let The Taker take over every silent moment in your head. That is not him, in that car. That is not you, getting out—
Stop!
There is a large building next to her. RENTON BIBLE CHURCH, the sign reads. CHURCH PARKING ONLY! VIOLATORS WILL BE BAPTIZED! She needs to pay attention. She is suddenly seeing problem number one: navigation. She doesn’t want to drain her phone battery, but she needs that GPS woman. They are about to have a very important relationship. She almost feels like she should apologize to her, for all the abuse she’s taken from her mother. This is one of Annabelle’s struggles, the sense that she must apologize and atone for other people’s actions.
“Let’s start fresh, you and me,” Annabelle says. “My mother isn’t exactly the most patient person in the world, so I’m sorry. She’s been horrible to you. I’ll do my best to be more respectful.”
“In one half mile, turn right onto Tenth Street,” the GPS woman says.
“I don’t even know who you are, and you’re going to be with me on the biggest trip of my life.”
The GPS woman is silent. She needs a name, for starters. As Annabelle heads for Tenth Street, she scrolls through some possibilities. Olive. Mrs. Cash. AJ. Big Rose.
“Loretta,” she says.
“Turn right onto Tenth Street.”
“Loretta it is, then.”
• • •
Somewhere just after the endless Highway 900, after a lunch stop for a bagel and water, Annabelle tackles the Coal Mines Trail, which parallels a railroad track before looping through a dark and fern-filled forest. She crosses a creepy wooden bridge. It is mossy-slick, and she has to watch her footing.
As she runs through the cool, dark woods, she begins to realize how alone she is. It feels dangerous, like the trees may start talking with gnarled wood mouths and reaching for her with twisted branch arms. She gets the creeps. It is alone-in-a-parking-garage fear, alone-on-an-empty-street fear, the kind of daily fear women are so familiar with that they forget how wrong that familiarity is. The damp path has splotchy parts. Mud smacks and dots her legs. And then: She’s out. She’s on Mountainside Drive and suddenly, shockingly, she grasps problem number two.
Hills.
Not just hills, but serious freaking inclines. And she is not unfamiliar with hills. Of course she’s run hills! But these are mountain foothills, which means they are the baby hills before she gets to the real deal of actual mountain passes. Already, as she makes her way up, she slows and leans forward, same as Mr. Giancarlo at Sunnyside Eldercare as he heads to the dining hall. Everything hurts. Her chest, her legs, her stomach. Probably this is also like Mr. Giancarlo at Sunnyside Eldercare, though he never complained. All Mr. Giancarlo used to say was Get that woman out of my room. What woman? There was no woman. Mr. Giancarlo had ghosts haunting him, too.
Annabelle shuffles. She can’t go fast, or she’ll never make it. She’s in excellent shape, training for this even if she hadn’t realized it, but sixteen miles a day could kill her if she doesn’t pace herself. At home, her friends are already in fifth period. This is taking a long time, much longer than she ever imagined, which is likely going to be problem number three. Seth Greggory is not exactly going to wait.
Her phone buzzes and buzzes. Wow! Look how popular she is, now that she’s not there. Now that people don’t have to face her and manage their own weirdness and sorrow. Of course, it could just be Gina, checking on her every two seconds. She can’t stop to look. This is her first day, and if she stops to look at her phone, she may just stop, period.
She can hear the freeway alongside her, I-90, humming along. Parts of the road have blind curves that scare her. She hopes she doesn’t get flattened by a car before she even gets out of her own state. Man, people drive fast. Problems number five, six, seven, eight!
Finally, she sees it—a tiny town, if you can even call it a town. There’s a single street with shops: a True Value and a Subway and the Preston Tire Center. She’s been out here once for a cross-country meet, but nothing looks familiar. After all of this running, she’s maybe a forty-five-minute drive from home.
“Help me, Loretta.”
“In two miles, take a left on Alder.”
“You’re a real friend.”
• • •
Her destination: the Secret Garden B&B, forty-two bucks a night. She booked it that morning, and she’s supposed to call home the minute she gets there so that they can decide what to do next. Annabelle loved The Secret Garden when she was a kid. She can still remember when the robin helps Mary Lennox find the key to the gate. So, okay, her expectations were high for forty-two bucks a night, but blame Frances Hodgson Burnett. The small, sagging house in front of her has faded gingerbread trim. The porch needs painting. On it, there’s a cat food bowl with dried stuff in it, and drapey cobwebs up in the corners, and a fat spider that has zero fear of being evicted. The welcome mat says only LCOME. But Annabelle is too exhausted and mud-splattered to care. She rings the buzzer. Twelve years later, an old hippie woman with waist-length gray hair answers the door.
“Yes?”
“I’m Annabelle Agnelli? I called this morning?”
“Oh! I was expecting someone . . .” Less muddy? Less covered in sweat? Less burdened, less crouched and exhausted? Someone not about to burst into tears? Someone whose life isn’t essentially over? “Older. Someone older.”
Clearly, the proprietor of the Secret Garden has not read or watched the news in the last nine months. Then again, Annabelle Agnelli may be utterly unrecognizable right now, even to herself.
Problems number nine, ten, eleven! She was stupid to think she could patch this thing together; stupid to think there’d be nice motels and cheap B&Bs along the way. There will be long stretches of country without any motels in sight.
This is why people plan for months. Her mom was right—you don’t just take off. Jason Dell had a team that followed along in an RV. He had a logistics coordinator, a driver, and the critical emotional support he needed. He had medical supplies at the ready, the right clothing and equipment, and meals prepared for him, along with a supply of protein shakes, protein bars, water, and snacks providing the hydration and thousands of calories required to keep him going. In that RV, he could sleep the essential eleven hours a night wherever he was.
It’s becoming very clear: This is a failed mission. She and Loretta can’t do this by themselves.