“Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide, wide sea!”
—Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Once again she woke in a strange, dark place, not knowing where she was. She fumbled in the darkness for the light. Her latest place of refuge was a small, rectangular room with one big window, basic furniture, a cheerful rug on the floor and pink curtains and bedspread. The lower shelf of the bedside table held a few books, some Nancy Drew and young adult novels and Anne of Green Gables. In the single chair sat a big black and white stuffed panda with a red bandanna around its neck. Two identical doors which, upon examination, led not to a lady and a tiger, but to a closet and tiny bathroom.
She woke from a dream in which she was being chased down wet, dark streets, through endless stretches of black forest. She had to cross a busy eight-lane highway, dodging the cars and trucks which raced at her without pausing, to get to her mother, waiting on the other side with outstretched arms. She had managed to cross and ran toward the figure, only to have it vanish. She had woken crying, her arms stretched out.
She was still exhausted and her body ached terribly, but the dream left her reluctant to return to sleep. Darn Araby, with her gentle hands and soothing voice, for stirring up this longing. Those tender ministrations had kindled a need for her mother’s arms, her soothing touch.
The clock beside the bed said four-thirty in glowing, green numerals. No wonder she’d dreamed of her mother. That was her mother’s usual hour to get up. She liked to do her thinking while the rest of the world slept. While, as she put it, the waves from other people’s brains didn’t impinge. Jenny flashed on the last thing she’d seen—that still white hand against the crisp white sheet. She didn’t know what the picture was now, didn’t even know if her mother was alive. It had been days since she’d checked. But if she called from here, just a quick call, and called the ICU nursing station and not the pay phone, she didn’t see how she’d give herself away. She didn’t see how Araby could mind. She’d pay for the call.
She crept down the stairs, acutely aware of the nocturnal creakings of the unfamiliar house, of her sense of disconnection, an alien in other people’s familiar worlds. She remembered seeing a phone on a stand at the bottom of the stairs. Quietly, she knelt on the hardwood floor and lifted the receiver. There was enough light in the front hall, from a street light outside, for her to dial. She punched in the numbers, and waited.
“Maine Medical Center,” a voice twanged at last.
“Special care,” she said.
“Please hold while I connect you.”
“Special care.”
Jenny crossed her fingers and said, “This is Jenny Cates. I’m hoping you can tell me how my mother is doing. Lila Friedman? She’s one of your patients?”
There was a silence, then the woman said, “Can you hold, please?”
Jenny counted to fifty, took three deep breaths, and counted to fifty again. Fears of the worst filling the void. A different voice came on the line. “Who is this, please?”
“Jenny Cates. Her daughter.”
There was a silence, then the voice said, regretfully, “I’m sorry, but we’re unable to release any information about that patient.”
She’s dead, Jenny thought. She’s dead and they don’t want to tell me over the phone. Panic and grief closed her throat. Numbly, she cradled the phone and stared out at the street light, gleaming through its halo of fog. She tried calling her father at home, but all she got was the machine. She didn’t leave a message. Then, because she had to know, she shed her caution and tried the waiting room pay phone.
It rang several times before anyone answered. “Is there a man named Bud Cates in the waiting room?” she asked.
“Hold on.” She heard the voice, it sounded like a teenage boy, asking, “Anyone here named Bud Cates?” Then the boy was back to her. “Hold on,” he said again. “They’ve gone to find him.”
She should hang up. Staying on the line was too dangerous. But she had to know. It wasn’t enough to assume that because he was still there, her mother was alive. She’d been too long without news, without any kind of contact. She had to hear his voice.
Finally, she heard his voice. The minute he said, “Jenny, is that you?” she burst into tears.
“Oh, Daddy. Everything has been so awful. I’ve been so scared. So worried.”
“Jenny, sweetheart, where are you?”
“I don’t know.” She couldn’t keep him on the phone long enough to explain. “It’s a long, horrible story. We don’t have time for that now. Tell me about Mom. When I called the nursing station, they wouldn’t tell me anything. And I was sure that meant—” She couldn’t finish.
“We’ve asked them not to. To protect her. I guess you realized that. She’s…” He took a deep breath, and her imagination filled the silence with a thousand awful things.
“She’s much better. I’m almost afraid to say it, for fear it will set her back, but the coma seems to be lifting. I know that’s not the right term, but that’s how it looks. Like she’s slowly coming out back to us.”
“Oh, God, Daddy. Oh, God. I feel like I’ve spent these last days with my fists clenched, waiting for news. Tell her I love her, please. When you bend down and kiss her, whisper that Jenny says hi. Tell her that I’m fine.”
“Are you fine?” he interrupted.
“Not even close,” she said. “But a very kind woman has taken me in, so maybe I can stop running and get some rest. I’m so tired.”
“You sound tired. Get some sleep, sweetheart. Call again when you can. And Jen.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t worry about your mother. There’s a policeman outside her door twenty-four hours a day.”
“Just keep checking their ID, okay? These people are so evil.”
“I know,” he said grimly. “You bet your ass I do.”
“Bye, Daddy.”
“Bye, Jen.” His hesitation over her name told her the dozens of questions he was holding back, his reluctance to let her go as great as hers. She could have stayed on the line all night while they breathed together, and felt closer and safer. “Jenny? I’m so sorry for all this.” And he was gone.
Slowly, sadly, she replaced the receiver and sat in the dark hall, longing for familiar places and familiar people. Even cradled and silent, the phone felt like a tangible link between herself and the people she loved. Her family. Her tiny little family. Eyes closed, she reached out her arms and imagined she was gathering them in. An imagining so vivid she could almost feel them, almost smell their special, individual scents, almost hear them breathing. Her mother, cool and soft, never quite still; her father, large and lean and warm. The brush of their lips on her face. She would have given anything to travel back in time just one short week.
“What are you doing, sitting down here in the dark?” Araby’s voice sent her parents scattering.
“Oh!” Jenny’s hands fluttered toward the phone. “I hope you don’t mind. I used your phone to call the hospital and check on my mother. She was attacked by…”
“You told me,” Araby said, “by some politicians, right?”
It sounded odd when she said it like that, but Jenny nodded. That was what had happened. “Right. I was just imagining I was back home with them, with my parents, and everything was fine. I’m sorry about your phone bill. I’ll be happy to pay.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Araby felt her hand. “You’re freezing,” she said. “You’d better get back in bed, where it’s warm. We’ll talk in the morning.”
Jenny followed her back upstairs, let herself be tucked in again, and waited until Araby’s footsteps had faded away. Then she took out the diary and started to read.
Oh, hell fire and damnation. I am not a romantic soul, but this was the most romantic thing that ever happened to me. It was, to get all trite and cliched, the kiss I’d always dreamed about and was absolutely sure never existed except in fiction. The kind that made me tingle right down to my toes. The kind that made me want to cast discretion to the wind and have sex with him right there in the back seat, Kenny behind the wheel be damned! The kind that made me melting and compliant and hungry.
Maybe I should give up the law and become a romance writer. Another night like tonight and I’’m not going to have any career left anyway. How can I be around him and not blush like a goddamned traffic light? How can I not advertise to the world what’s running through my head when I think of him?
He was the one who finally pulled away. “Oh, Lord, Lila, what are we going to do?” But that was after he’d unbuttoned my blouse and kissed the tops of my breasts, and the side of my neck. After my lips were bruised and swollen. After he had whispered that he wanted me so badly that he ached. And I, for once, hadn’t been able to summon the outrage to give him my blue-balls lecture. Because I felt the same way. Blue ovaries?
But I’d had a proper, old-fashioned up-bringing, and I knew better. So when he did pull away and ask what we were going to do, I said, “I’ve had a job offer in Bangor.”
The silence was long, and then he said, “You’d do that?”
“I don’t want to. I love my job, but—”
“But what, Lila? But what?” He sounded impatient and angry. Hurt, like I was brushing him off. Running away, when it was the last thing I wanted to do. I tried to explain.
“This is going to sound stupid and preachy, Jim. I’m not stupid and I’’m not preachy, but I believe in you. I mean, I believe that you can make a difference in the world. Getting involved with someone in your office, when you’re married, could keep that from happening. We need to look at the bigger picture.” It did sound preachy but I couldn’t find a better way to put it. He’s the politician, not me. I’m only eloquent on paper.
“How can I see the bigger picture, when all I can see is you, Lila? You fill my whole horizon.”
It went on like that, with me talking about how he was a married man with a family and a brilliant future, how he had a bigger duty than just to do what pleased him, he had a calling to do good for all the people of Maine, and him talking about how all he cared about was me and how he hadn’t heard a word from me about what I wanted, until Kenny cleared his throat and announced that if we wanted to talk any longer, he’d have to get gas. So they brought me home, but he made me promise I’d see him again tomorrow night.
Now I don’t know what to do. When I’m with him, I feel like I’ve been transformed from the edgy and competitive smart girl that the guys shied away from to some kind of wise and sensual goddess. Again, it sounds like a basketful of clichés, but I do feel transformed. I feel beautiful and desirable and special, even if I can’t flaunt it like Yeah, Yeah, look at me, girls, I’ve got the biggest and best prize anyone ever caught! At the same time, I know he admires me for my mind. I know he values my work. I know that the praise he’s given me, and the encouragement and advice, have been because he thinks I’m already a good lawyer and will become a much better one. Loved for my mind and loved for my body? Loved for my looks and also for my passion and my politics? Is it any wonder I’m having trouble getting a handle on this?
Tomorrow I’m going to call the DA’s office in Bangor and arrange an interview.
Don’t do it, Jenny thought. Don’t let him drive you out of this job. She knew that wasn’t fair. Jim Buxton hadn’t asked her mother to change jobs. He’d asked her not to. This was her mother’s attempt to protect both of them from a scandal that could ruin their careers. The impression she’d gotten was people might have had suspicions, but no one knew the affair was going on. How had they managed it? And what about the video tape? She felt such love, such empathy for her mother’s struggle, seeing, at the same time, her mother in the hospital, the pale, inert form gradually reanimating. She read on.
I shall draw a little tombstone on this page, and write upon it, “Here Lies Lila’s Virtue.”After last night, that certainly is the case. I’m not talking about virginity. That was left behind some time ago. I’m talking about the right to cast the first stone. I’m talking about violating my personal code of ethics. I can never condemn anyone again for the follies of sex with the wrong person, because I have transgressed. Transgressed. I love it! The word has such a high falutin’ sound. I’m dancing on air. I confess to having no regrets. None. Not a shred. If it weren’t a deep, dark secret, I would proclaim to the world at large that my expectations have been met and exceeded.
I am Helen Reddy, strutting, singing, “I am Woman.” The other woman. Woman in love. A Man and a Woman. I am overjoyed and full of regret. But for this one day, before I drift back down and touch earth and run smack up against cold reality, I will not think of Bud Cates, or my mother, or Jim’s wife, and what they all might think of me. I will not think about the Democratic Party, nor the possibility that even though I believe him and adore him, I might yet turn out to be one in a long line of secret conquests. I will think about how sore I am, and how good it feels. I am taking a sick day, because I need twenty-four hours to think. To think, among other things, of how a woman who has spent her life being cautious and avoiding risks, could have gone on making love long after we’d run out of condoms. Of how poor Kenny Bass will have to throw out those sheets, perhaps even that mattress. Of excess. Indulgence. The sheer delicious madness of having been utterly swept away.
No, Jenny thought, this was not something she’d like to see in the national press, topped with lurid headlines, in every supermarket checkout line:
She didn’t want a penis of her own, but she sure wanted Buxton’s.
Buxton’s Babe Bares All.
Legal Days and Illegal Nights.
Why on earth had her mother kept these? Why hadn’t she burned them herself? Her mother had never been a sentimental woman. But that wasn’t entirely true. On her mother’s desk was a picture of Jenny winning the state spelling bee. Bangs too long and a loopy, toothy grin. A picture of Bud Cates being named Teacher of the Year, looking young and abashed and a bit like a physics wonk. A picture of Billy graduating from high school, waving his diploma, and itching to go out and make trouble. Those she loved retained a cherished place in her heart. She had loved Jim Buxton.
The diary entries grew more sporadic, more brief. No longer pages, but little hasty paragraphs.
Billy knows something is going on. I’ve never been any good at hiding things from him. He sees right through me. So last night, when he showed up to tell me about his latest job venture and I was trying to get him out of the apartment because I was supposed to go and meet Jim, he just sat back on the sofa and grinned at me and said, “Whatsa madda, Lil, got ants in your pants? Think I can’t tell that you’re trying to get rid of me? What’s so special about this new guy that you can’t introduce him to your brother?” We had a fight about that, me saying I had a right to my privacy, and Billy, the perceptive little bastard, announcing that if he couldn’t meet the guy, there must be something I needed to hide. Finally he stopped asking and left.
I raced over to Kenny’s, found Jim in a state, sweating and clammy and pacing like a panther. He grabbed my hand and held on so tightly it hurt and he asked in a desperate way, “Lila, have you got any of those painkillers left?” But when I opened my purse and took out the Tylenol, he gave a bitter laugh and looked at me like I was stupid “Not that stuff. The real stuff. Prescription stuff.”
I had something the dentist had given me when I had my wisdom teeth out. A whole big bottle. I said yes. Jim looked like he was having a seizure or something, all pale and jittery. He said, “Give your keys to Kenny and tell him where to find it. I need you to stay here with me.”
He looked so bad and was acting so odd I followed Kenny into the kitchen and demanded to know what was going on. Well, Kenny Bass is 100% Jim Buxton’s man. He would have stonewalled, but I’m not always sweet, agreeable Lila. If there’s one thing this job is teaching me, it’s how to get answers. I put my foot down and said no keys and no drugs unless he told me, and reminded him that we were in this together, whatever “this” was, and I’d stand by Jim just like he would.
He hemmed and hawed and I stood my ground and then Jim was in the doorway looking gray as death. He said, “For God’s sake, Kenny, tell her what she wants to know and go get those damned pills.”
And then Ken didn’t have to tell me anything. I just knew. Knew why he was sometimes so unpredictably moody and irritable. Why he was always taking pills. Why, once or twice when he was at my place, I’d heard the medicine cabinet open and shut. I hadn’t thought twice about it, or assumed he was being curious about me. Foolish female vanity. I’d been secretly flattered by his nosiness when he was stealing my pills.
I felt a strange combination of betrayal and anger as I held out my keys to Ken. “In the medicine cabinet. Second shelf.” And I turned my back on him because I didn’t want him to see my face. “It’s not his fault, Lila.” I ignored him. “Really. It was the back pain and then recovering from surgery. He was too busy to slow down and rest so it could heal, so he just kept popping pills. Now he’s hooked.”
“Hadn’t you better be going, Kenny?” I said it snottily because I was feeling betrayed. It’s a shock when your heroes fall off their pedestals. But Ken didn’t go. He stayed there in the kitchen—we were in the trailer and it was an ugly, dark room, too small for big feelings. “Look, Lila,” he said. “He’s the same man you knew yesterday and the day before. A great man who happens to have a problem. Maybe instead of getting all righteous and huffy, you could think of some way to help.”
That bastard Billy. If I could get my hands on him, I’d kill him. His idea of joke. Taping me and Jim. Probably thought he was getting some hot, steamy sex, which means he hasn’t seen the tape yet. I don’t know when he set it up, or how, but this is a thousand times worse. Kenny and I had talked it over and decided the only way to help Jim was to walk him through a cold turkey withdrawal. We figured we’d use my place and just take turns sitting with him until it was over. God, it was awful. A hundred times, Jim begged me for relief and it took all my willpower to say no. And keep saying no, as he got sicker and shakier and more pathetic and desperate. Kenny was no better. He loved Jim too much to watch him suffer. Friday was bad and Saturday was worse, and it was Saturday night, with Jim green-faced, vomiting, and wildly out-of-control, and me dirty and exhausted, that Billy got on tape.
Billy dropped by acting so weird, with this big, impish smile that always means he’s got a joke going on someone, I had to ask, and he had to tell me. When I demanded the tape, he said no, said he wanted to watch it first, and then I really lost it, and I literally went for his throat, all the while telling him what kind of harm he might be doing. He did have the grace to look abashed, but he won’t give me the tape, and now, because he knows how mad I am, he’s gone into hiding. I mean, you never know where Billy is living. Usually it’s with the woman of the moment, and they change more often than his underwear. Jim sent Kenny and some of the other state cops looking for Billy, and when they found him, they beat the crap out of him but they didn’t find the tape, and now I don’t know what we’re going to do.
She wondered if the men who were chasing her thought she had the tape, and then wondered whether they knew what was on it. Not likely. Probably, like Billy, they were looking for steamy sex. It would be so much more damning to find sweaty drug addiction. Outside, the sky was beginning to get light. Another night without enough sleep. But she couldn’t stop reading.
Jim said he had some bad news for me. That as I must have known, the senior senator from Maine had had a heart attack, but what I didn’t know, because they were keeping it under wraps, was he wasn’t expected to recover. I asked the question I knew I was supposed to ask. “What does this mean for you?”
“They’ve approached me… it’s still very premature, of course… about filling the seat.”
I felt like someone had knocked the breath right out of me. Sat there in Kenny’s stark trailer, staring at the false wood paneling and the utilitarian greenish-brown carpeting, and let the impact of Jim’s words sink in. Feeling like I was dying right there, my incredible joy packed away for eternity. We had talked about where things would go between us. He’d described his marriage as bleak and loveless. Described his wife Margaret as an attractive and competent person he admired very much, but as someone who had lost interest in him and, for the most part, in his political career. He’d said he didn’t think she’d be that opposed to a divorce, assuming the terms were favorable.
I had allowed myself to believe him when he talked about our future, when he spoke of leaving Margaret, even though I knew he had children and hated the idea of hurting them. I had entertained visions of the day when Jim and I would work, side-by-side, to change the world the way he planned to change it. I had imagined a cozy little home where I cooked while he practiced politics, and, because I’m a feminist, where we cooked while we practiced politics. I had even, shame, shame be my name, envisioned a child. A sturdy little boy with Jim’s eyes and my hair, coming to us for help with his homework, bringing his tales from school, walking between us as we strolled down the road of life, holding our hands.
When Jim said he was being considered for the Senate seat, I literally felt sick. I felt like someone had taken all my hopes and dreams and ripped them out by the roots, like a tooth extracted without anesthesia. And the space where they had been filled with blood, a hot, surging river of it, so that I felt like I could open my mouth and it would pour out. I excused myself and locked myself in the bathroom. Knowing that once again I was being a cliché, the woman who says she doesn’t care, who says, “no strings,” who therefore shouldn’t be devastated. I was devastated.
I knew I had to send him away. Tell him good-bye. Let him go without wavering, without hesitation, without laying a guilt trip on him or trying to hold him back and without letting him change my mind. I was devastated because I was pretty sure that I was pregnant with Jim’s child, and knew I could never tell him.
Jenny blinked away tears and closed the book. There was a little more, but she couldn’t face it. Not with the image of the young Lila Friedman sitting in a dingy trailer, desperately in love with a man she was preparing to send away. Pregnant with the child of a man she loved, willing to let him go because she believed he had a destiny. Because her hopes for him were, if anything, larger than his hopes for himself.
A thought hit her. Why did she call her mother’s sacrifice crazy? Why was it crazy to believe in someone? What was so crazy about putting someone else’s interest above one’s own? Jenny’s mother hadn’t been crazy, she’d been noble, in an antiquated way the me-first world didn’t value. Except for one thing—there had been Jenny. And didn’t she have a stake in things, too?
But her mother had provided a father so wonderful, so completely paternal, that Jenny had never wanted for anything in the father department. She had believed the lie of her paternity, never had any reason to doubt it. And her father, her actual father, the man who had raised her, had never wavered in his love, steadfastness, and devotion.
It made Jenny jealous for a minute. Her mother had been cherished and desired and adored by two fine men, while she herself had loved one who had betrayed her. She shook it off. Down that path lay nothing but misery. She liked feeling close to the young Lila Friedman. From her mother’s own words she knew that at the same age, her mother had been much like her. Slightly too self-consciously smart, the outcast, the one who had waited on the sidelines to be chosen for the love team. Until she’d met Bud Cates and Jim Buxton, and had her embarrassment of riches. And then her mother had discovered, as one so often discovers, that when you get what you wish for, it often takes a form that makes you regret having wished at all.
I am going to push Jim Buxton out of my life and close the door. It’s the only thing I can do. If I give him any hope, he’ll try to find a way for us to stay together, and blow this wonderful opportunity. It would be even worse if he knew about the baby. But all that can wait. Tomorrow I’ll invite him to my place, cook him dinner, and have a night to remember. And I hope it will be good. It has to last a long, long time. Forever.
She closed her eyes and saw her mother’s sad, young face staring ahead into the future. Then she opened her eyes and started reading faster. Suddenly she wanted to know how it ended, how her mother had concluded this book. She was filled with an ominous sense that when the sun came up, some new hell would break loose. No matter what the day brought, it was time for this diary to come to an end—a physical end—eliminating the chance that anyone else would ever see it. It was too personal. Too precious. In the vicious world of political campaigns, there was no respect for feelings, only for agenda and advantage. It would give Governor Alfonso a hell of an advantage if he could show his opponent in the jittery, vomiting throes of kicking a drug addiction.
With her lower lip caught between her teeth, she read the last page.
Last night my baby, our baby, was born. Jennifer. She is lying beside me now, quiet and curious, studying the world with her restless blue eyes. Every mother must feel this, but she seems to me the most beautiful creature the world has ever seen. Her perfect fingers. Her perfect tiny toes, pink and precious and with those amazing little toenails, not much bigger than pinheads. Bud has been wonderful. I think he already adores her and I know, because of the uniquely good man that he is, that he will never treat her differently because she’s not his biological child. He will make her his child. Already, watching his big hands encircle her tiny body, I see the affinity between them. They will love each other. Deeply. Profoundly. Her life will be cushioned by his goodness.
I am wicked, when this has ended so well, to dwell on might have beens, but in a corner of my heart, I still feel a sharp sorrow that her father will never know this child. Never know she exists. It’s a hard secret to keep, but no one ever said that life would be easy. I believe in discretion. Privacy. Living with pain rather than laying it on other people. So I will keep it to myself and go forward with the joy of this new moment. I won’t look back. The three of us, Bud and Jenny and Lila, heading into the future. A family.
It was risky, but Jenny couldn’t stop herself. She ripped out the last page, folded it a thousand times, and stuck it in the key pocket in her bra with the folded up bills. Then, before she had time for second thoughts, she took it out again, tore it into tiny pieces, and flushed it away. She watched the confetti of her birth flow away with a physical pain so intense she had to cover her mouth to keep from crying out.
If Jim Buxton was the good man her mother had believed him to be, why did he try to kill someone he’d once loved? And why was he trying to kill her? Suddenly, she wanted to ask him. Get him on the phone and ask him. She wanted to stop running, get right up in Buxton’s face, and ask him why he, or those who worked for him, were trying to kill her mother, and how he could let his goons murder his own daughter.
She closed the diary with a snap and headed downstairs to make that call, but at the top of the stairs she stopped. Araby was on the phone. Jenny held her breath, listening, as Araby said, “Yes, well, this one’s pretty far out of touch with reality. She says her name is Jenny Cates. That Senator Buxton, who’s running for president, is her real father, and that Buxton and Governor Alfonso killed her uncle, tried to kill her mother, and now they’re trying to kill her.” A pause, then “Mmm-hmm. It’s a story. Rammed on the highway. Sent careening into a fiery car crash, and running all night through forests. Yes, that would be a good idea. I think this is a little beyond my abilities. You can pick her up anytime. She’s not going anywhere.”
“Like hell she’s not.” Jenny turned and went upstairs. In the bathroom were clean clothes that Araby had laid out. Everything but shoes. Jenny dressed. As she heard Araby coming upstairs, she pulled the nightgown over them and crawled into bed, pretending to be asleep. Araby came in very quietly, moved the panda, and sat in the chair. Jenny faked being asleep, regulating her breathing to a pace slower than her body liked. Go away, she thought. Leave me in peace. Why are you sitting there? Araby’s eyes, which had seemed warm and mysterious last night, now only seemed untrustworthy.
She sat so long Jenny wondered if the woman had fallen asleep. Finally, apparently satisfied that Jenny was sleeping, she crossed the room and reached for Jenny’s purse. The same woman who had said, “I won’t touch it. I promise.”
Faking restlessness, Jenny suddenly moaned and turned toward Araby. The woman dropped her hand and moved away, waiting to see what would happen next. When Jenny didn’t move, she walked swiftly to the door and left.
As soon as the footsteps died away, Jenny threw off the nightgown, shoved the diary into her purse, and hurried down the stairs. She searched everywhere for her shoes, but only found a too large pair of rubber boots. Maybe Araby kept her girls safe from the street by locking up their shoes. She found her jacket on a peg in the laundry room. Still cold and damp, but better than nothing.
Outside the sky was growing light. The world was still a soft gray in the fog, but it was lightening from battleship to dove. Another night with only minimal sleep, but it was time to travel on. As she watched through the window, a dark car pulled around the corner and coasted to a stop at the curb across the street. The door opened and a tall man emerged. A man Jenny had seen before. Awkward in her rubber boots, Jenny went to the back door and slipped out.