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“I do, but nothing works. Nothing. I mean, nothing works. All eating crackers gives me is something more substantial to throw up. God,” she groaned, “I wish I’d never let this happen.”
“Dude, it’s pointless now. What’s done is done.”
“Thank you, Spence,” she bit sarcastically.
I hid a smirk.
“What’s the plan? Send me off to our cousin’s? Pretend my nonexistent husband died in the war?”
“Funny, but not too far off.”
“What does that mean?”
“I mean, we have to hide, Bridge.”
“Maybe I can, like, take a semester off, have the baby here, give it up or something.”
“He’ll never go for that. He’d never risk being exposed.”
“Well, maybe-maybe we—” she began, the backs of her hands against her cheeks.
“We can’t anything other than leave L.A.”
“I can’t,” she answered desperately. She stood, then realized she could barely stay upright so she slumped at the edge of her bed. “I can’t leave L.A. All my friends are here, school. What about Mom?”
“Mama’s afraid of Dad, Bridge. She’ll only stop us.”
“Maybe she’d come with us,” she added wildly, wringing her hands.
“She won’t. She’ll try to stop us and you know it.”
Bridge’s hands pushed her hair out of her face. “I can’t do this without Mama, Spence.”
“Yes, you can. I’ll be there.”
“It’s not the same,” she said honestly.
My heart broke for her a little. “I know, Bridge, and I’m sorry for that, but this is what we have to work with.”
“What are we going to do about money? Where are we going to go?”
“I’ve got some money,” I hedged. “August is helping us with the rest.”
“August knows?”
“Yeah, I had to tell him.”
She huffed, reminding me of the teenager she was and making me cringe a little. “Fine.”
“Okay,” I said, stretching across the carpet that laid at the foot of her bed. My feet hung over a few feet but I didn’t care. I tucked my hands behind my head. “Okay,” I repeated, trying to remember everything August and I talked about. “August’s grandparents own a remote cattle ranch in Montana. He’s going to talk to them and let us know if we can hide out there, at least until you turn eighteen and Dad can’t touch us.”
“Dad can find us anywhere. This seems pointless,” she said, hanging her head in her hands.
“Not this time, trust me.” She didn’t believe me, but she wasn’t going to argue. “You know how Dad always yells at us about how he doesn’t want the liability if we ever got drunk and killed someone driving?”
“Asshole,” she said under her breath.
“Well, Mom told me he put our cars in our names to release that liability.”
