She was quiet for a long moment.
"You don't even know me," she said.
"Doesn't matter."
She looked at me then. Really looked, the way she had from the blind this morning—running those calculations I didn't have access to, looking for the thing behind the thing.
Whatever she found, she didn't say.
She looked back at the ridge.
"Okay," she said quietly.
Dolly pushed her nose against Willa's hand and she opened her fingers and let the goat walk into them, and the three of us stood there in the afternoon heat while the light went long and gold across the pasture and the cedar held its breath.
I wasn't going anywhere.
She'd figure that out.
FIVE
Willa
It was the first night that I’d ever had to myself.
Strange…I know. But that was the thing, the whole reason I’d left home and run away, not sure what would even be out there. The only thing I knew was that I would actually be able to breathe…be able to think. Make my own choices, not just lie there in my twin bed in a room with three other women older than me…lie there in dread of if Mr. Daley would pick me to sleep in his room that night.
I hadn’t grown up on the Daley homestead—but not that far off from it, either. My papa was another believer, raised his girls to be good and be quiet and to obey. I’d spent my entire life living one day at a time—you just have to get through today, Willa.
And I think…I’d thought that maybe it would be better when I had a baby. That maybe Mr. Daley would leave me alone.
I’d held out for four years.
The baby never came.
And now…now I was here. Deciding what to do with my own time for the first night of my life.
Wondering when it would end.
Deciding to just get through today.
Forrest left me to my own devices for the most part, and at first, that was strange. I sat in my room not sure what to do for about thirty minutes. It was tidy, comfortable…quiet. Every so often I could hear the goats outside, or the bray of a horse somewhere else on the property, the low of cattle. It was too hot to crack the window, though I was sorely tempted if only for the sake of hearing the creek.
Eventually, I found the courage to actually go through the bag Haven had brought for me.
Inside, there were all kinds of clothes—none like I’d grown up wearing, but all kinds anyway. Dresses, if that’s what I wanted…big, baggy t-shirts, a couple pretty blouses, jeans, sweatpants. A set of matching pajamas with white flowers on blue cotton.
I pulled out the pajamas and ran my fingers over them…soft with use, the tag worn so thin that you couldn’t read it anymore.
And there were other things. A toothbrush. A comb. A hairclip. A bottle of shampoo, another of conditioner, andbubble bath…which made me want to take a bath right away, because I hadn’t missed the clawfoot tub in the bathroom.
Snacks. Some chocolates.
And then there were the books.
I pulled out the small stack and sorted through them…on the top,Anne of Green Gables.In the middle, something calledUntamed?
And the most scandalous of all, something that I’m sure would have sent me running back home if I’d fled from the Daley homestead even a week earlier—a romance.
