It was the middle of winter when Tammy left. She got ready to go to work at the gas station as usual. She picked up Mercy and gave her a quick squeeze before trying to set her down. The toddler cried and tugged on her shirt, grabbing at her pant legs as she headed for the door. All business, Claire picked Mercy up and headed toward the kitchen. Trudy was upstairs in bed. Nobody said goodbye as Tammy stepped out into the freezing January morning, the cold air making her shaky breath visible.
Claire and Trudy had been angry with her for months, pouring on the guilt. Tammy had been out a lot lately, had started not coming home after work once a week, twice a week. And she found that the more time she spent away from home, the better she felt.
So, that morning, while Trudy slept, Tammy shuffled around the darkened bedroom, packing a bag. Some of her own things, some of Trudy’s. She brought the bag downstairs and put it by the door in plain sight. Who would notice with the amount of junk jammed into the tiny entryway? When she left for work, Claire was so caught up in comforting poor Mercy, in showing Tammy how it was done, she didn’t notice the bag. Had she even noticed her leaving? Tammy doubted it. She left the house. She worked her shift, and at quitting time, she just waited around in the parking lot in front of the garage. When the Voyageur bus pulled up, she got on it.
She hoisted her bag onto the rack and settled into her seat. She watched thirty miles of grey-blue river go by her window, then the low stone walls of the outskirts of Brockville, with its psychiatric hospital, its boarding school for girls. A movie theatre, a dairy bar, a strip club, a row of shops. The courthouse. The bus pulled to a stop outside another gas station, and she hauled herself up and walked down the aisle, down the steps, and out onto the gravel lot. Snow was starting to fall in big fat fluffy flakes, glowing in the beams of the street lights.
It wasn’t very far from home. Not nearly far enough. But it was a start.