Oh god, only a year. If she’d found her courage just a little bit sooner, if she’d gone only nine years instead of ten, she would have come out and found her aunt alive.
Whether her aunt wanted to see her—whether her aunt had any fond memories of the city or had sent the postcards purely out of loneliness and duty—those were hurdles she could have faced.
Now she couldn’t.
Now she was in the desert hundreds of miles away from home, and there was nothing but strangers and heat and dead white dust.
Copper licked her face and wagged her tail, concerned that her human was making upset noises. That was okay. She could wipe dog slobber off her face and nobody would know she was wiping off tears.
The door creaked behind her.
“Oh, honey,” said the post office woman. “I’m sorry.” She sat down on the porch next to Selena, not touching, but close by. “Guess you were hoping for better news.”
Selena had no scripts at all now, and only nodded.
Stupid, stupid, should have thought what you’d do if she was dead or even had moved, didn’t think, didn’t plan ...
What she knew, down in her heart of hearts, was that she couldn’t have planned. This had been her last thrash toward self-preservation. She might as well go lie down in the desert now and let the sun bleach her bones.
“I’m sorry,” she croaked. Copper licked her chin again, worried.
“Nothing to be sorry about,” said the post office woman. “We all ought to have somebody to cry when we pass on.”
Guilt joined the lump in Selena’s throat, because she hadn’t been crying for her aunt at all, but for herself.Callousandstupid.
The woman held out her hand to Copper, who sniffed it and gave it a vague, meditative lick. Selena rested her cheek on the dog’s warm, furry back and tried to think of nothing at all.
“What’s her name?” asked the woman.
“Copper,” said Selena. Her voice was still shaky, but that was a safe question and a safe answer.
“Good name.” She scratched Copper behind the ears and was rewarded with an enthusiastic tail wag. Copper did not believe in disguising her emotions. “Black Lab?”
“Mostly.” Selena wiped her face. “The rescue wasn’t sure what the rest was. Some kind of hound, maybe.”
“You’re a pretty girl, aren’t you?” the woman asked Copper. Copper gazed at her soulfully and attempted to convey that she had never been petted, not once, but would like to experience it.
The familiar conversation grounded Selena a bit. Everything was terrible, but she still had to do the next thing and the next thing after that. She couldn’t just sit on the porch crying all over her dog.
“Is there ...” She swallowed.Twenty-seven dollars.“Is there a motel or a hostel near here?”
“Can’t say there is, no.”
Selena hadn’t expected there would be. Quartz Creek didn’t look big enough to have a Dollar General, let alone a motel.
I’ll have to get back on the train. Somehow.
She could call Walter, of course. Turn on her phone and call him. He’d wire her the money and she could get a ticket and go home.
If she did that, he’d explain to her that her nerves had just been disordered from grief over her mother’s death. Or maybe she could say that she went to tell Aunt Amelia in person, and then he’d chide her for not having thought it through, but allow that it was perfectly understandable under the circumstances. Losing her mother had been a blow, and it was bound to dredge up lots of things. Anyone would act a little irrationally under the circumstances.
He’d be right, of course. And—Selena knew herself—she’d be grateful to him for being so understanding. Shewould. And then later he would refer to the time that she had hared off to the middle of nowhere without enough money to get home, and she would flush hot with shame at the memory.
It would become one more of the stories about How Selena Had Done Something Foolish and Walter Saved Her. The story might lie in wait for years, but then it would rear its head and strike. She’d never know when to expect it. During an argument. Or during a party, maybe, when Walter needed to top a coworker’s story about something silly their spouse had done. Or maybe just in a moment when Selena wasn’t sufficiently grateful for all the things he did for her.
The story would never go away. Walter forgave immediately, but he never, ever forgot, and so neither could Selena.
The thought was so exhausting that she felt like crying again. She drank some water to stave it off, swallowing down the lump in her throat.
