Remember to Forget (4 page)

“But—”

“Shhh. Just accept it. Maybe you can do the same for someone else when you’re an old woman like me.”

Maggie didn’t know what to think. She needed the money. It might be the only thing that kept her from running back to Kevin. But she didn’t feel right accepting cash from a stranger. Besides, Opal had already given her a ride and offered to buy her breakfast.

She let her gaze meet the woman’s rheumy brown eyes, questioning.

“Please,” Opal said, “if it makes you feel better, I have plenty where that came from. My father left me well off.”

Maggie made up her mind. She touched Opal’s veined hand. “Thank you so much. You don’t know what this means to me.”

“I think I have some idea.” Opal smiled. “You go on now. And God bless you.”

Maggie wanted to hug her, but somehow she couldn’t make herself reach out and embrace the frail woman. Too many times she’d made herself vulnerable, only to be rejected. “Thank you, Opal. God bless you too.”

Maggie turned and ran up the street, not slowing until she veered into a side alley. She pivoted and started to jog backward, hoping to spot Opal. When a flash of ice blue disappeared into the café, Maggie stopped on the corner of the street and held up one hand in a useless wave.

“Thank you,” she whispered. Reluctantly, she jogged around the corner. She ran for six blocks, careful to pace herself, so she would appear to be an ordinary morning jogger. But she took a circuitous route, going a block north, turning west for another block and a half, then zigzagging north again through a wide commercial alleyway. If the cops were looking for her, she wouldn’t make it easy for them.

Now fairly certain she wasn’t being followed, she stopped at a bench in front of a post office, exhausted and out of breath. Glancing around to make sure no one was watching, she plucked the wad of cash Opal
Sanchez had given her from the pocket of her khakis and unrolled the bills. She fanned them out enough to read the denominations. Her breath caught at the sight of two hundred-dollar bills along with some smaller bills. She took a quick count. With her change from the liquor store, she had almost three hundred dollars. Except for making out the checks to pay the apartment bills, she hadn’t had that much money at her disposal since the day she quit her job at the design firm and moved in with Kevin.

Three hundred dollars wouldn’t last long, but maybe long enough to get her far, far away from New York.

The sleepy little town of Saddle River was starting to wake up. The digital clock atop a savings and loan down the street flashed back and forth between 78 degrees and 6:15 a.m. She was in New Jersey. Probably a couple of hours from the apartment.

She’d already gotten farther away than she ever dared to dream. Strangest of all, after all the nights she’d lain awake in bed beside Kevin, planning an escape she knew would never happen—staring at the ceiling, terrified to move, lest she awaken him and provoke his ire—now, without one moment of planning, she found herself miles away and him none the wiser. She shook her head in disbelief. It was as if she’d been handed a gift beyond anything she could have wished for.

But what next? Where could she go on three hundred dollars? More importantly, if she managed to find a job and a place to live, she’d have to prove her identity, go on record. And he would find her. She knew him too well not to believe that.

The sun slanted between the buildings and warmed her face. Beads of perspiration sprung up on her forehead. She’d better decide something soon.

When her stomach growled, she remembered she hadn’t eaten since yesterday evening. She stood and shoved the cash deeper into her pocket. The most important thing she could do now was to put as many miles as possible between her and Kevin Bryson.

Had he gone to the office yet? Would he stay home and worry about her, or would he go on as usual? Would he fix his own lunch, or would he have to buy something from the cafeteria at the firm? She was going to be in so much trouble when he—

She shook the thought away, wagging her head so hard her hair grazed her cheeks. Never again was she going to be in trouble with him. It was time to wash his controlling, brainwashing messages out of her mind.

She was free.
Free
.

With new resolve, she headed down the street. But after walking aimlessly for ten minutes, she realized she didn’t know where she was going. She couldn’t just wander around this town looking lost.

When she passed a café, a pretty hostess waved and smiled from the window. Somehow that small acknowledgment gave her courage. Backtracking, she stepped inside. The aromas of cinnamon and vanilla and strong coffee assailed her nostrils. Her stomach rumbled again.

“Good morning. Just one this morning?”

Maggie froze for a second.

The hostess waited expectantly, still wearing that welcoming grin.

Maggie inspected the merchandise in the glass case beneath the cash register while she gathered her wits. “I just need a pack of gum and—” Gulping in a deep breath, she made a decision. “I was wondering where I could buy a bus ticket.”

F
our hours later and ninety-nine dollars poorer, every joint sore from the long hike to the bus station in Ridgewood, Maggie stared out the window of a Greyhound bus headed for Columbus, Ohio. She would have been sunk without Mrs. Sanchez’s cash. As it was, she was lucky they’d let her on without a photo ID. She told them the truth—if not the whole truth and nothing but the truth—that she’d left her
license in the glove compartment of her car.

She stared at the telephone poles jutting up along the railroad running parallel to the highway. They had a hypnotic effect on her as they flashed past the windows of the bus.

She had never been to Columbus. Never been farther west than Philadelphia. But Ohio was as far as she could go for less than one hundred dollars. It felt like leaping off a cliff to purchase that ticket.

Now she only hoped she could fly.

Wren’s laughter drowned out the ghost of Amy’s voice. The relief of it eased Trevor’s pulse.

Chapter Four

T
revor Ashlock pulled the last sheet of paper off the press and punched the shutdown switch. The roar of the massive Heidelberg died to a
whirr
, then went silent. A dying fluorescent light buzzed above him, threatening to drown out the Vivaldi wafting from the CD changer in Trevor’s office.

He doffed his filthy apron and hung it on a peg by the back door. On his way through to the front office, he switched off the CD player and the overhead lights. The Main Street door was locked, and beyond the plate-glass windows, the street was empty, as it was every night by five in Clayburn, Kansas, population 1,250. At the counter he leafed through the new orders Dana had put in the in-box. There were seven or eight job tickets. Nothing that would let him retire at thirty-five, like he’d once foolishly dreamed—especially
now that thirty-five was less than three years away—but that advertisement they’d run in the
Clayburn Courier
had apparently done its job.

Not that he had any desire to
ever
retire nowadays. No. Best to keep busy. To keep from having to go home too soon. He moved to the back of the office and cranked the thermostat up. It’d be hotter than blazes in here come morning, but the electric bill was eating up half his profits.

After exiting the back door and locking it, Trevor headed toward his pickup. He tossed his briefcase into the passenger seat, then trotted across the alley to the inn. The sign declaring the place Wren’s Nest hung at a cockeyed angle over the side entrance. He made a mental note to fix it first chance he got. But the electrical work in the kitchenette was top priority tonight. He’d promised Wren Johannsen he would have the electricity back on before he quit for the night, and it would take a good three hours to finish rewiring the tiny room. He also hoped to get a good start on the drywall. At least it would be nice and cool at the inn. And if he was lucky, Wren might have a slice of her famous peaches-and-cream cheesecake left over from the Tuesday-morning Bible study. Working on Tuesdays had its advantages.

He walked through the long hallway to the lobby, noting that the doors to all the rooms were open, meaning there was, unfortunately, plenty of room in the inn. Business usually picked up on the weekends. But if they didn’t fill at least a couple of rooms on the weeknights too, Bart and Wren Johannsen couldn’t pay the regular bills, let alone afford the remodeling Trevor was doing for them.

He admired the Johannsens for not giving up. But there came a point where they’d be better off cutting their losses and getting out while they could. He was afraid that point wasn’t far off. Bart was surely old enough to retire, but Trevor respected the man for not taking that step. He’d already decided he would never retire. It was hard enough filling that hour or two at home before he could finally crawl into bed and let sleep dull his senses and shut off the memories.

“That you, Trevor?”

At Wren’s shrill call, he shook off the voices and images that had started to play in his head—Amy’s musical laughter, little Trev’s pudgy arms reaching out to him . . .

“Yeah, it’s me, Wren. Hey, is that cheesecake I smell?”

Wren’s laughter drowned out the ghost of Amy’s voice. The relief of it eased Trevor’s pulse.

Wren appeared in the doorway of the little dining area adjacent to the kitchen, hands propped on her ample hips, stretching to her full five-foot-two stature. She attempted an aggravated expression but couldn’t quite succeed over the twinkle in her eye. “Now how am I supposed to bake anything when my oven is sitting in the middle of the kitchen?”

“I don’t know”—he inhaled deeply—“but that doesn’t smell like anything that came from the Wal-Mart bakery.”

Wren chuckled and shook her head. “Ooh, you’re good, Mr. Ashlock. I’ll give you that. Clara let me use her oven, but she was none too happy about it, I can tell you. I’ll be hearing about it for umpteen weeks.”

He grimaced, exaggerating his expression, in an effort to take the blame for Wren being on the outside of Clara Berger’s good graces.

Her smile forgave him. “You get my kitchen back in working order before you leave tonight, and I’ll send the whole bloomin’ cheesecake home with you.”

“The whole thing?”

She expelled a breath and tucked a strand of white hair into her frowsy bun. “Bible study got cancelled. And you know Bart. The man will eat every last slice of that thing if I leave it sitting here. And there’s not enough insulin in Coyote County to counteract that much sugar.”

Trevor grinned. “Well, in the interest of Bart’s health, I guess I can take it off your hands.”

Wren waved off his joke and bustled past him to the broom closet behind the check-in desk.

He helped himself to a couple of day-old snickerdoodles from the antique cookie jar on the desk and ducked under the ladder
leaning against the arched dining-room doorway. He stood there, chewing and surveying the space.

Last month he and Bart had knocked out the back wall of the kitchenette, appropriating six feet from an unused side entry to enlarge the tiny galley kitchen and turn the dining alcove into an L-shaped room.