Fly Away (Firefly Lane 2)

Take stock.

She’d woken up in this condition more times than she could count. She knew what to do.

She was in bed, with Truc sprawled beside her, his bulbous belly pointed skyward, his hairy arms outflung. It was dark out now. Night had fallen.

She inched out of bed and winced as she put her weight on her left ankle. Sprained in one of her falls, obviously.

She limped to the bathroom and saw herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. Her hair was a tangled mess and matted with blood. Her eye was swollen shut and the bruising around it was a sickening stew of purple, brown, and yellow. Her nose was in the wrong shape—flattened—and dried blood caked her chin and cheeks.

Hurting too badly to clean up, she dressed in what she could find, yesterday’s clothes or last night’s clothes, she couldn’t remember, and it hurt too much to look down to see if there was blood on the fabric.

She had to get out of here, away from Truc, before he killed her. She had thought this before, dozens of times, every time he beat the shit out of her, and once, about a year ago, she’d even left for a while, made it as far as Tacoma, but in the end he found her and she came back because she had nowhere else to go, and really, this was what she expected in her life. It was what she’d always had.

But she wasn’t young anymore, was old, in fact. Her bones broke so easily these days, and what if one of these times she hit the wall and her spine just snapped?

Do it.

She crept past him to the bedside table and fumbled shakily through his wallet, where she found three twenties. Fisting the money, she knew it would only make it worse for her if she didn’t get away, but she would get away this time. She had to.

As quietly as she could, she took a step.

The floor squeaked and Truc made a sound in his sleep and rolled toward her.

She froze, her heart pounding, but he didn’t wake up. Releasing her breath, she gathered up her two important belongings—a ragged, falling-apart macaroni-and-bead necklace and an old black-and-white photograph. She put the necklace on and tucked the photograph into the pocket of her flannel shirt, buttoning the pocket to protect it.

She turned quietly on her unhurt foot and limped out of the room.

Outside, the dogs immediately sat up, watching her intently. Mount Rainer loomed not far away, its snowy peak lit by the moon.

“Shhh, boys,” she said, edging past them.

She was picking her way around the ripped old Barcalounger when the first one barked. She kept going, didn’t look back.

It was dark out here in the woods, so dark that only with patience and slow going could she find her way, and the pain of each step reverberated up through her body. Her neck ached like hell and her face literally pulsed with pain, but she didn’t stop or slow down until she got to the bus station in Eatonville. There, hidden on three sides by dirty Plexiglas, she slumped onto the bench and finally breathed.

She pulled out a joint—her last one—and smoked it as she sat there in the dark, and it helped, but not enough. Her pain was still unbearable, as was her regret. Already she feared she would go back.

She climbed onto the bus when it arrived, ignoring the driver’s judgmental look.

Two and a half hours later, at just past ten P. M. , she got off the bus in downtown Seattle. Pioneer Square, to be exact. It was where you could disappear in Seattle. She knew all about being invisible. It was what she needed now, to become an insubstantial shadow in a blurry world.

But as she moved in this place that should have welcomed her with its dark corners and blind alleys, her headache intensified. It felt like hammer blows to the skull. She heard the small whimpering sound she made and thought that it couldn’t be coming from her. She’d learned how to suffer through pain quietly, hadn’t she? He’d taught her how a long time ago.

She hurt so much she couldn’t think straight.

The next thing she knew, she was falling.

Nineteen

Cloud came awake in stages. First came the realization of her pain, then of her breathing, then that she smelled clean. That told her where she was.

Hospital. She’d been in enough of them in her life to recognize the sights and smells and sounds. It was November 2005, and she was running away.

She lay quietly, afraid to open her eyes. She remembered the night before in staccato images—a red flashing light, being lifted onto a gurney and wheeled into a bright white room. Doctors and nurses buzzing around her, asking who had beaten her up and who they could call for her. She’d closed her eyes and ignored them. Her mouth had been so dry she couldn’t talk even if she had had something to say, and now the shaking in her hands was back.

There was someone in the room with her. She could hear breathing, and the flipping of pages on a chart. Cautiously, she opened her good eye. The other felt swollen shut.

“Hello, Dorothy,” said a plump black woman with dreadlocks and a smattering of dark freckles across her fleshy cheeks.