Page 56 of Love You To Pieces

But the padlock clicks open before I can panic, and with just a light push, the tall gate creaks open outward.

To my surprise, Pearl isn’t the first one out. I look down, expecting to see her at my legs, before turning to see that she’s still on the porch, with her eyes fixed on me. When she sees me looking, she wags her stubby tail, one paw up and scratching at the doorframe.

“No,” I call to her. “Come on. We have to leave, girl.”

She whines, the sound pathetic and whistling. Her paw goes up to scrape against the wood of the frame, I’m pretty sure chipping off some paint this time, and she even barks at me, like I’m the one misunderstanding our purpose here.

But I can’t leave her…right? I don’t want to leave her. She’s quickly become one of my few remaining friends on this planet, and I need her.

“Please,” I whisper, waiting for her to look at me again. God, I’m going to cry if this dog doesn’t come with me. I can already feel the burn of tears in my eyes, and my vision seems to go a little blurry at the edges. “Please, Pearl. Don’t make me go alone.”

She still hesitates, and I’m about ready to give up when Pearl hops off the porch and heads toward me through the yard. She makes it known, however, that this isn’t her favorite option, by stopping to sniff just about every sniffable object on the way.

“Thank you,” I tell her, reaching out to stroke a hand along her back as she passes me. “I can’t offer you human organs when we get back to Nashville, but I’ll introduce you to rabbit and chicken, beef, pork—whatever.”

Because she will come back to Nashville with me, realistic expectations be damned. I don’t care how many vaccines or health tests I need to get done so it’s okay for her to be in my apartment with me.

I don’t care how many times I have to walk her.

I fucking love this dog, and I will not let her stay behind.

Even if she’s happier here? That nasty little voice whispers in my skull, almost too quietly for me to hear.

So I ignore it, pretending it was just the wind, while closing the gate behind me and shoving the key back into my bra. Now all I have to do, I tell myself silently while looking at the expanse of farmland in front of me, is make it back to town.

And then, finally, I can find a way home.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Unfortunately for me, things aren’t quite so simple. Once I’m out of the yard, I do in fact hear the chickens, and I stare stupidly at the coop and the chickens pecking around in an actual vegetable garden for a few moments.

The farm outside the back yard feels more alive than the yard, and in a nearby field, I catch sight of a few lazily grazing horses that make me remember my dreams of growing up to own them myself. Not that it’s in the cards now, and I barely manage not to go over just to see if they’ll let me touch their soft noses.

Not the time, Sadie-Rae, I chastise.

Pearl gives a few quick sniffs by the wood fence before moving on, acting as if she’s seen it all before. Even when a dog somewhere semi-close by starts barking, Pearl doesn’t bother to look or give her own greeting in reply.

Whether Fox’s stories about cameras are true or not, I can’t think about that right now. I need to find a road, a highway, the town, sometime in the next decade if I want to get anywhere of value.

So I walk.

And walk.

And then, when my legs are burning with every step, I walk some more.

When I finally find the highway, it’s about what I’d expected. Two lanes, with dusty shoulders and faded yellow paint that probably hasn’t seen a road crew in a century. The roads are full of potholes, and the asphalt has seen better decades. Part of me considers hitchhiking, if only to save my legs from going to jello under me.

But that thought is quickly squashed when I remember the men in the truck who started all of this to begin with. While I try telling myself that not all truck drivers are body-part selling monsters, somehow I can’t quite convince myself.

Besides, with my luck, the only people to pull over for me would be Deacon or Fox, and they’d just throw me back in the damn dog kennel or cut me into pieces to serve at their next meal.

Would they? I can’t help asking myself. After all of this, would they really?

I don’t stay on the road, exactly, but I stay close enough so I can still see the asphalt and reflective strips between lanes. The cars I see traveling along it are mostly old, mostly dusty, and like they were picked mostly for being practical, rather than for their looks. They’re few and far between, and every time one nears me, lights on to cut through the night’s darkness, I can’t help but tense and crouch down a little.

As much as I don’t want to walk anymore, I want to get caught by someone who’ll just return me to where I came from even less.

I’m so tired and sure that I must be going the wrong way that when lights that don’t belong to a passing car finally appear in my vision, I don’t quite notice at first. I just keep walking, my legs on autopilot, until I finally stumble onto the cracked asphalt of an old parking lot.