NATE WAS OUTSIDE the police station when we arrived, pacing back and forth in the small grassy area in front of the entrance.

I slid out of the truck. “Nate, what’s wrong?”

“Your father is here,” he said, agitated.

“What?”

“Charles is here?” Robert asked.

Nate nodded, lips pursed tight. “I almost went for his throat, but they told me to leave or they would arrest me again.”

“Is Edna here too?” Robert’s jaw flexed.

Nate nodded again.

“Stay out here,” Robert said. He looked at me. “I mean it.”

“Okay.” The word came out shakier than I wanted. I wasn’t ready to see Charles and Edna. I looked down at my body. The clothes were as trendy as any I’d seen on the girls at school. And my hair…fortunately, the dye wasn’t permanent, and the hairdresser suggested I let it wash out on its own, but she had trimmed the ragged edges and now it fell around my face in soft curls.

Nate stared at the door of the station. “I can’t stand the sight of them.”

“Why are they here?”

Nate started pacing again. “They want you back.”

I stepped toward Robert’s truck, my feet ready to sprint. “Want me back?”

“Yes. They’re trying to file kidnapping charges against Robert and delinquency charges against you.”

“That can’t be right. We have witnesses to the punishing. It’s not safe for me to go back there. Can’t the sheriff do something?”

Despite the low-slung clouds that obscured the soaring mountains’ peaks, the air was humid, causing Nate’s hair to curl around his ears and over his neck. I resisted the urge to wrap a strand around my finger, all too eager for a distraction.

“We’ll go back to our original plan,” he said. “We’ll run. You will not go back to that mountain.”

I couldn’t understand why he was so upset. There was no way they would send me back there. I wanted to stay with Robert and after the punishing…well, they wouldn’t make me return. No one would even suggest it. Would they?

Robert’s voice could be heard through the thin windows of the station, loud and irate, though I could not make out what he was saying.

They wouldn’t do that to me—they wouldn’t send me back to the mountain. The idea was absurd.

Through the window I could hear Detective Ambrose yelling at Robert to calm down.

There was movement in the window and suddenly Edna appeared, long and wiry. When she saw me, her eyes narrowed, and she looked like a satisfied serpent whose next meal was trapped by its long, powerful body. With a slow rise of her bony hand, Edna pointed at me.

My heart pounded like a bass drum.

Suddenly, the door burst open and Charles rushed out, scrambling toward me on long spidery legs.

I stumbled backward as Edna shot out the door behind him. Nate jumped in front of me, ready to defend me from my family.

Robert bolted out the door followed by Ambrose then the sheriff, but they were too late. With a violent shove, Charles barreled over Nate.

I shuffled several feet away as Nate sprang to his feet and charged Charles, grabbing him around the legs and yanking his feet out from under him. Robert and Wilhelm grabbed Charles, struggling to shove him onto his stomach. The sheriff yanked out a pair of handcuffs and secured them around Charles’s wrists.

Ambrose sprang after Edna, who was closing in on me like a bird-of-prey.

My brain told me to bolt, to light a fire under my feet and flee as fast as I could, but my muscles seemed to say this couldn’t be real. Edna couldn’t possibly be diving toward me. This was all just a nightmare I would wake up from.

But Edna didn’t stop and soon had me clutched in her skeletal hands, and something cold pressed to the pulse point of my neck.

“Edna!” Ambrose screamed, lifting a pistol and aiming it at Edna’s forehead. “Put the knife down!”

The men looked up from their struggle with Charles, eyes wide, stunned. Nate’s face drained of all color. Robert sprang to his feet.

“Put it down, NOW!” Ambrose planted her feet.

Sheriff Wilton stood upright and started to move forward inch by inch.

“Someone must pay!” screeched Edna.

The sheriff stopped, hands raised.

Charles was sitting now, hands cuffed behind his back, unblinking eyes planted on his mother. The wound on his cheek from the marking stick was red and blistered.

“Must pay for what, Edna?” asked Ambrose.

“For the humiliation of my son! Robert never paid the price for the damage he did!” The knife tip pushed into my skin and I cried out.

“Sarah paid!” Robert shouted. “Wasn’t that enough? She paid with her life!”

“It’s not enough! This evil spawn…we allowed her to live so we could bring her up right! So we could wash her free of her mother’s sins!”

Edna dropped her hand from my arm but grasped my short hair in a tight fist, yanking my head back. “Look at her! Look at what she’s wearing! One day off the mountain and she’s turned into her whore of a mother!”

“Mother, please.” Robert dropped his voice to soothing and soft. “None of this is Marli’s fault. She is innocent.”

“She must return to the mountain.” Edna did not drop the knife.

“You want me,” Robert said, “not her. The sin is mine. I am the only one who can atone for Sarah’s actions.”

Edna shook my head like it was attached to a child’s ragged doll. “Look at her! In these shameful clothes! Shameful whore paint on her face! One day off the mountain!” Her words echoed off the building, the trees, the mountains. “Evil spawn.”

Ambrose stared at Edna, finger trained on the gun’s trigger.

“Edna, drop the knife,” Sheriff Wilton said. “We will talk this through. I’m from the mountain, too. Remember?”

She whipped around, jerking my head. I was pretty sure I felt one of my neck muscles tear. “You’re a traitor. You’re nothing but a no-good, worthless heathen!”

Ambrose followed Edna’s movements, the gun always pointed at her head. But Edna was moving too much and I was shaking too hard. She would never get a clean shot.

Tension hung thick in the air, threatening to suffocate us all. Finally, Charles said, “Mother, stop. Release her. It’s over.” All eyes fell on Charles. “Let her go.”

“Let her go? Son, you know what they did. They…they betrayed you and the church! We will never be able to free her from the sins of her mother unless she is on the mountain!”

Charles shook his head, his shoulders slumping like every ounce of fight had left his body. “It’s over.”

Edna yanked my head hard and I whimpered from the pain. Ambrose moved a step closer. Edna pushed the knife into my skin until I felt a thin layer give way. Was that blood running down my neck or sweat?

“Give her to me,” Robert said. He held out his hands as if he was preparing to accept a gift.

Edna lowered the knife and lessened the grip on my hair. Just as I thought Edna was going to let me go, she yanked my head back, whipped the knife back to my neck. It was slicing into my skin when a gunshot rang out.

Edna collapsed. I fell on top of her. Someone was screaming and it wasn’t until Nate yanked me into his arms that I realized it was me.

“Marli! Look at me!” Nate put his hands on my face and forced me to look up. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”

I closed my lips, swallowing the next wave of screams. “I’m okay?”

“You’re okay.”

“She didn’t slit my throat?” I touched my neck. When I pulled my fingers back, they were covered in blood.

“She cut you but I don’t think it’s deep.”

“Who fired the gun?”

“Ambrose.”

“At Edna?”

Nate nodded. “At Edna.”

“Did she hit her?”

He nodded again. “She’s gone, Marli. Edna’s gone.”

I went numb.

NATE’S ARMS WERE warm and strong, wrapped around me so tight there was no end to his body and no beginning to mine.

We were in Sheriff Wilton’s office, huddled on the couch. After the shooting, he’d scooped me up like a child and hurried inside, far from the chaos that descended. He’d helped me clean up in the bathroom before bringing me in here and closing the door.

I appreciated the solitude more than I could say. I didn’t want to be around any of them right now, including the sheriff, Ambrose, and even Robert. Just Nate. Nate was all I needed, all I wanted.

Every now and then he would rub my arm, back, head, as if trying to make sure I knew he was still there. I relished every touch more than he could ever know.

Edna had tried to kill me and now Edna was dead.

She was my grandmother. She really thought killing me was the answer?

A strange, strange world I lived in, for sure. Did everyone else have drama like mine? Somehow I doubted it.

“Are you hungry?” Nate asked at some point.

“A little, I guess.”

“I think I saw granola bars out front. I’ll be right back.”

“Thanks.” I stumbled to the bathroom to splash water on my face. There was a small cracked mirror over the sink, and the reflection that stared back at me didn’t look alive. It looked like a ghost haunted by demons past and present. Dark circles colored the skin beneath my eyes. My bones were too prominent, cheeks sunken, adding to the effect.

Such a shame my clothes had gotten ruined with Edna’s blood. Now I had on sweatpants and a sweatshirt that Ambrose had given to Nate for me to put on. I had really liked that unicorn shirt, too. Maybe, if and when my life veered toward a more normal path, I would buy myself a new one.

I should start a list of all the ways I wanted my life to be normal from now on, all the drama that I was going to leave behind, all the fresh new and inconsequential teenage stuff I was going to fill my days with.

Number one: leave behind people who wanted to murder me.

That wasn’t so inconsequential but it was a good start.

After washing my face and rinsing out my mouth, I left the bathroom only to find Robert standing by the door. For several minutes we stood like statues. Robert and I stared at each other as Nate glanced between us.

“I’m so sorry,” Robert said.

I nodded, my throat swelling. My grandmother was dead. There was a part of me that hurt. She was family, after all. But she’d also tried to kill me, and some part of me registered that. But mostly I felt numb. Lifeless. Drained.

Number two: remember how to feel alive.

I slid my hand into Nate’s and immediately eliminated the need for number two.

“Do you want to come home?”

Home. I guess that was now the only home I had.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.” I turned to Nate. “Where are you staying tonight?”

“My PO helped me find an apartment close by. I’ll take you to see it soon.”

“You’re staying there tonight?”

“Yeah. He’s taking me by Goodwill tonight for a few things. I’ll be fine.”

I nodded. “I’m so happy the emancipation came through. It’s the best thing for you.”

Nate leaned into my ear. After offering a soft kiss to my lobe, he whispered, “I’m going to get you a cell phone tomorrow so you can contact me anytime you need to.”

I clung to him. “That would be nice. You’ll have to teach me how to use it, though.”

He chuckled. “You are so sheltered.”

I inhaled the smell of his skin. “I know. You’ll have to change that.”

“Deal.”

I stepped toward Robert. Nate stayed where he was, hands in his pockets, watching me. He smiled and it was more reassuring than I expected. Did he have a good feeling about my future? His own? The look on his face suggested as much. I tried to offer a smile in return but was still too stunned and half-delirious to do so. Instead I moved back to his side, desperate for a kiss. He was eager to oblige and gifted me with a quick and chaste kiss to my lips, but somehow making it amazing at the same time. I followed Robert to his truck.