I’m still Sarah Anderson.
The foster kid. The abused little girl. The woman who's running away from old ghosts.
I don’t know if Sarah is allowed to have nice things. Not for keeps.
But what a beautiful temporary this is.
So I close my eyes, and sway in time to the music, feel the way his body is pressed against mine.
If all we have is beautiful temporary, then I’ll revel in every moment. Until it fades away like stars with the sunrise.
Chapter Twenty-One
Dallas
The weeks slip by, and there comes a point where we can’t wait any longer to go get Sarah’s things.
We’ve been in a bubble. We meant to leave it a month, but we let one roll into two. She’s still been paying her rent – but she had warned her landlord she’d be moving out. Now the landlord is getting edgy because they need to know when they can find a new renter which is fair enough. So we need to break the bubble.
I don’t mind driving her everywhere, I really don’t, but there’s no point her paying for an apartment she’s not living in, and it would be better if she had everything she needed.
She’s tense when we load up for the trip to Sisters, and I don’t blame her. I almost can’t believe she’s the same girl that I met there a couple of months ago. Because so much has changed since then.
She’s changed. She’s happier.
I like to think some of that has to do with me.
What’s truly amazing is how muchI’vechanged. I used to have this idea of what the most important things in my life were. I used to feel like I had a certain amount of anger, self-destruction to work out before I could claim anything like a normal life. Now I don’t feel that way.
I feel like there are no mountains left to climb. I’ve found my home, my homestead, and I want to settle down.
But I’m also very aware that Sarah is twenty-one, and has lived her life with terror, trauma, and the ghosts of her past following her around.
I’ve had a decade to heal, and while there were parts of me that were still bound up, in a lot of pain, finding my dad, having that chance at normal, at support, it’s meant a hell of a lot more to me than I think I’ve even given it credit for. I can see how it changed me over time.
She hasn’t had that. She’s been scrapping and fighting the whole time. Healing has been theoretical. She hasn’t had the support system I’ve had. Support systems make all the difference. Mine sure as hell did.
I know she’s going to need time. I know she’s going to have to go on her own journey. I just feel impatient.
I rent a small moving trailer that my truck can pull, which should fit all her stuff. Once we get out on the road, she rests her elbow on the window and turns her head to look at me.
“Just so you know, Allison’s stepmom has a cottage in town that I’m allowed to stay in. I mean, I can rent it. And it’s affordable for me. I think they’re giving me a really good deal.”
“Huh?” Her words are a shock at first, and then, as I process them, like a stab straight to the chest.
She wants toleave?
“Yeah. I… I don’t feel right about mooching off you. And really, it seems like the right thing to do for me to get my own place. I mean we’ve been… whatever this is, we’ve been doing it for a little over a month and nobody would have the person they’re fucking move in after a month.”
Theperson she’s fucking?
Like that’s all we are? Like that’s all it is. She eats dinner with my Goddamn parents. I don’t know what she’s doing, and I really don’t like it. I tell myself that I can just calm down and listen to her, and we can discuss it more in depth later, but… I put the brakes on, and stop the truck right in the middle of the long, lonely highway. “What are you talking about?”
She looks around. “Why did you stop in the middle of the road?”
“Why are you saying crazy shit?”
“It’s not crazy shit. I moved in with you because I was in a desperate situation, and you’ve been great, but I don’t need to take advantage of you like that.”
