Come to me.
Come to me.
And lo, though it were madness to do so, the dark-haired, green-eyed young woman took a step from the street and into the darkness of the rainy woods.
All his power, and he could do nothing but summon a breeze to rustle the leaves upon the trees.
But sometimes, that was all it took to send a butterfly’s path into the Web that waited for her.
Ava was havingthe worst day of her life.
Which was the culmination of the worst two years of her life. Everything had slowly been building up to this moment—this one, horrible fucking day.
She tried to remember a worse one, and couldn’t. Literally went through every day she could recall as she walked through the outskirts of North Adams in the pouring Massachusetts rain…and nope. This one was the worst. She had no coat, but at least it was summer.Small favors.
The deluge had quickly soaked through her simple black t-shirt. It was one of her favorites. It’d made her laugh the moment she’d seen it—with its cartoon Medusa head and big bold text that readThe Female Gazeover it. When she had to pack up whatever she could carry out with her, it’d been her top choice.
Ava was having the worst day of her life, but not because it was raining.
But because, as of an hour ago?
She was homeless.
Honestly, she should’ve seen it coming. She should have. Her father was acompleteasshole, and this had been coming from the moment he’d walked out.
She’d screamed at him the day he’d walked out on her and her mother two years ago. Telling him he couldn’t justdothat—as if shouting that in his stupid face would make him change his mind. Yeah. It hadn’t worked. He’d left. He’d picked up his bag, shut the door, and left their little house in North Adams that he’d shared with her mother—his wife—for twenty-five years.
A wife who had been dying offucking cancerfor fouryears.
Whose treatment and daily care was “taking a serious and unfair toll on him.”
Never mind that Ava had given up her senior year of college in Boston to be there by Mom’s side as she died. Never mind that she’d given up all her friends, her job prospect with an architectural firm in the summer after she’d graduated, everything—to be with her family.
A family that was gone the moment her mom’s funeral was over.
She figured her dad would move back in the moment Mom was gone.
Oh, he had.
With a new woman.
And their three kids.
And had promptly told Ava to get thefuckout.
“You have to understand,” he’d said. “You just…remind me too much of her. And you’re an adult.”
No. She didn’t understand. But he owned the house. So, out she went. With just the bag on her back and that was it. Nowhere to go. And no friends who hadn’t gone off to college.
At least in the rain, she could hide the fact that she’d been crying for about an hour. Where was she supposed to go? What was she supposed todo?
Her cellphone service was already dead. Her father had canceled everything that was in her mother’s name without even thinking about it. So she had no way to search for any local shelters.
The idea of walking into a random coffee shop and asking someone for help made her skin crawl. Would they think she was on drugs? Opioids were a huge problem in this area. Would they think she was just another useless early twenty-something living on the street?
Well, that’s what I am, now.
Go to a church? Ugh. No. Fuck, no. That’s all she needed. To be told she needed to accept Jesus in exchange for a place to sleep and a pat on the head.
