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She opened her door for me and was dressed, though her hair was wet.
“Where are your bags?” I asked, checking the room.
“In my closet.”
I made my way through her room to the closet and took in just how many clothes she was leaving behind. She only had a single bag of clothing.
“What in the hell, Bridge? This isn’t going to last you.”
She met me inside.
“None of my shit fits me anymore. None of my jeans will even button. It’s infuriating. It’s, like, I’m not showing really but the buttons refuse to close.”
“Probably because they were too small to begin with,” I said in frustration.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
I sighed. “Nothing, Bridge. We’ll find you some clothes later.”
I grabbed her small bag of t-shirts and a few jeans and another she had packed with shoes and whatever else girls need then threw it next to mine at the bottom of the stairs before making a quick sweep of my room to make sure I got everything I needed. I turned to leave but stopped at the door, examining everything. I knew there was a very good chance I was never going to see that room again.
As it turns out, though I thought my local bank opened at six in the morning, in truth that was only the drive-thru, which was frustrating as crap because they wouldn’t issue a cashier’s check without checking ID in person. The lobby didn’t open until seven-thirty, so Bridge and I went for breakfast at a twenty-four-hour place to pass the time. We were losing valuable hours, and that made me exceedingly nervous.
“Can you just, like, I can’t stand the silence,” she said, shivering opposite me in our fiberglass booth.
“Cold?” I asked.
“No, nervous.”
“Okay, well, Bitterroot, the town they live near, is in the northwest portion of Montana. Today’s high’s supposed to be thirty-one degrees and the low should be around twelve.”
“God,” she said, wrapping her ski jacket tighter around herself. I stopped. “Keep going,” she added when the waitress brought orange juice.
I pulled up a map of Montana on my phone. “August’s grandparents’ ranch is called Hunt Ranch.” My finger searched the map. “Right there,” I said, pointing to an area outside of Bitterroot, Montana. “He says there’s approximately five thousand acres to hide ourselves in and that it butts against the northwest tip of Lake Gossamer then spreads west, it lies west of the city of Bitterroot. I did a little research and figured we’d have to drive south,” I said, my finger following the highway on the phone, “into Kalispell for anything important though.”
“Why?”
“‘Cause Bitterroot is smaller than any small town you’ve ever been to.”
“Oh, Christ. That’s depressing.”
“From what I can tell, though, the scenery is probably some of the most beautiful we’ll ever see,” I offered.
She considered this. “Beautiful, huh?”
“Yeah, colder than a witch’s titty, though.”
She shook her head at me but smirked. “Classy.”
“I know. The ranch is owned by August’s grandparents, Emmett and Ellie. He’s got a cousin there named Cricket. I think he might be a little older than you. He graduated from high school a few months ago, apparently. Anyway, Cricket and August are pretty close.”
“Well, at least there might be someone to talk to there.”
“There’ll be more than just someone. It’s a working ranch, Bridge, which means there will be at least twenty people there on a daily basis.”
Our food arrived but neither of us ate much for a myriad of reasons. I slapped two twenties down and we left right as the bank’s lobby was opening.
The bank was where I kept any liquid funds I needed. It only had about two hundred thousand in it. My remaining fortune was kept in a Swiss account for obvious reasons. My stomach flipped when I thought on the two million I’d lost in Vegas. I knew my dad well enough when I opened the account to understand that if he could manipulate my funds, he would. He’s transparent like that. I needed an account he had zero access to and the Swiss provided that for me. So that meant that any local funds needed to be removed immediately and the accounts closed.
