Every time Martha looked out her bedroom window, she saw the dust cloud from Tanner’s truck still hanging in the air at the end of the driveway. She knew that was impossible; they’d left hours ago. It was a trick of the light or a trick of her mind. But even after night fell she saw it there, swirling slowly, glowing in the moonlight.

How could she have let Izzy go? She should have fought tooth and nail. But she’d never kept Izzy safe. Martha was the one who had taken her along the desert trail and into the room. Then she hadn’t pulled Izzy out, even when every cell in her body screamed for escape. Martha was responsible for all of it. If she had only ignored those girls that night at the casino and dealt with her own grief instead of dragging Izzy into it, none of this would have happened. And now she had served Izzy up to Tanner again.

Every horrific scene possible played out in her mind: Izzy with the men in their truck, alone with them inside Zero Zone.

She couldn’t call the police. She knew where that would lead. News footage of another siege, tear gas, and then bullets stabbing through the room. She couldn’t call Sam. She refused to involve him in her disaster. Their time together now seemed like desperate playacting. Driving out to his place to make dinner, watching old movies on TV, slow dancing to Loretta Lynn on the kitchen radio. A bullshit fantasy, falling away like flower petals, or clothes shed, leaving Martha exposed again.

The night and another whole day passed. Her throat throbbed; she still felt Tanner’s hand there, squeezing. She closed her eyes and was back in the room. The hunger and thirst, the oven-like heat. Tanner was there, and Danny, and this new man who laughed like an animal, each in a corner watching Isabella move toward the center, the new sun unfolding.

This would never end.

She tried to imagine Misty there with her, sitting on the love seat in the living room. She needed her sister’s strength, to see that look on Misty’s face when she wanted Martha to get on with it and make the hard choice, whether it was getting back on a diet or breaking up with a shitty guy Martha met at the casino. The sculpted arches of Misty’s eyebrows raised, her mouth screwed into an irritated line.

Martha opened her eyes to the empty trailer. Misty wasn’t in the living room. Misty was dead. If Martha really wanted to join her, there was only one way. Maybe the answer had been that simple all along.

She heard something outside, a crunching sound disarranging the night’s silence. Martha went to the window, listening from behind the curtain. Tires on dirt, coming down her driveway. An engine approached, then idled and cut out. One car door opened, then another.