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“I’ve got nineteen.”
“Hand it over.”
She emptied her wallet and stomped inside the service station while he changed the tire. The coins that had collected in the bottom of her purse were all she had left. As she stared at the snack dispensers filled with goodies she could no longer afford, Ted Beaudine’s old powder blue Ford pickup pulled to a pump. She’d seen him drive the truck through town, and she remembered Lucy mentioning that he’d modified it with some of his inventions, but it still looked like an old beater to her.
A woman with long brunette hair sat in the passenger seat. As Ted got out, she lifted her arm and pushed her hair away from her face with a gesture as graceful as a ballerina’s. Meg recalled seeing her at the rehearsal dinner, but there had been so many people, and they hadn’t been introduced.
Ted slipped back inside the car as the tank filled. The woman curled her hand around his neck. He tilted his face toward her, and they kissed. Meg watched with disgust. So much for Lucy’s guilt over breaking Ted’s heart.
The truck didn’t seem to take much gas—maybe the hydrogen fuel cell Lucy had mentioned. Ordinarily Meg would have been interested in something like that, but now all she cared about was counting the change in the bottom of her purse. One dollar and six cents.
As she drove away from the service station, she finally accepted the fact she least wanted to face. She’d hit bottom. She was famished, filthy, and the only home she had was nearly out of gas. Of all her friends, Georgie York Shepard was the softest touch. Indefatigable Georgie, who’d been supporting herself since she was a child.
Georgie, it’s me. I’m aimless and undisciplined, and I need you to take care of me because I can’t take care of myself.
An rv chugged past, heading into town. She couldn’t face driving back to the gravel pit and spending another night trying to convince herself this was simply a new travel adventure. Sure, she’d slept in dark, scary places before, but only for a few days and always with a friendly guide nearby and a four-star hotel waiting at the end of the trip. This, on the other hand, was homelessness. One step away from pushing a shopping cart down the street.
She wanted her father. She wanted him to hug her close and tell her everything would be all right. She wanted her mother to stroke her hair and promise that no monsters lurked in the closet. She wanted to curl up in her old bedroom in the house where she’d always felt so restless.
But as much as her pa
rents loved her, they’d never respected her. Neither had Dylan, Clay, or her uncle Michel. And once she hit Georgie up for money, her friend would join the list.
She started to cry. Big, drippy tears of self-disgust for hungry, homeless Meg Koranda, who’d been born with every advantage and still couldn’t make anything of herself. She pulled off the road onto the crumbling parking lot of a shuttered roadhouse. She needed to call Georgie now, before her father remembered he was still paying her phone bill and he cut that off, too.
She ran her thumb over the buttons and tried to figure out how Lucy was managing. Lucy hadn’t gone home, either. What was she doing to get by that Meg hadn’t figured out how to do for herself?
A church bell tolled six o’clock, reminding her of the church Ted had given Lucy as a wedding present. A pickup rattled by with a dog in the back, and the phone slipped from Meg’s fingers. Lucy’s church! Sitting empty.
She remembered passing the country club when they’d driven there because Lucy had pointed it out. She recalled lots of twists and turns, but Wynette had so many back roads. Which ones had Lucy taken?
Two hours later, just as Meg was about to give up, she found what she was looking for.
Chapter Six
The old wooden church sat on a rise at the end of a gravel lane. Meg’s headlights picked out the squat white steeple just above the central doors. In the dark, she couldn’t see the overgrown graveyard off to the right, but she remembered it was there. She also remembered Lucy retrieving a hidden key from somewhere near the base of the steps. She shone her headlights on the front of the building and began fumbling around among the stones and shrubbery. The gravel ground into her knees, and she scraped her knuckles, but she couldn’t find any evidence of a key. Breaking a window seemed sacrilegious, but she had to get in.
The glare of the headlights sent her shadow shooting grotesquely up the simple wooden facade. As she turned back to her car, she spotted a roughly carved stone frog perched underneath a shrub. She picked it up and found the key beneath. Tucking it deep in her pocket for safekeeping, she parked the Rustmobile, retrieved her suitcase, and climbed the five wooden steps.
According to Lucy, the Lutherans had abandoned the tiny country church sometime in the 1960s. A pair of arched windows bracketed the double front doors. The key turned easily in the lock. The inside was musty, the air hot from the day. When she’d last visited, the interior had been washed in sunlight, but now the darkness reminded her of every horror movie she’d ever seen. She fumbled for a switch, hoping the electricity was turned on. Magically, two white wall globes sprang to life. She couldn’t leave them on long for fear someone would see—just long enough to explore. She dropped her suitcase and locked the door behind her.
The pews were gone, leaving an empty, echoing space. The founding fathers hadn’t believed in ornamentation. No stained-glass windows, soaring vaults, or stone columns for these stern Lutherans. The room was narrow, not even thirty feet wide, with scrubbed pine floors and a pair of ceiling fans hanging from a simple stamped-metal ceiling. Five long transom windows lined each wall. An austere staircase led to a small wooden choir loft at the rear, the church’s only extravagance.
Lucy had said that Ted had lived in the church for a few months while his house was being built, but whatever furniture he’d brought here was gone. Only an ugly easy chair with stuffing showing through a corner of its brown upholstery remained, along with a black metal futon she discovered in the choir loft. Lucy had planned to furnish the space with cozy seating areas, painted tables, and folk art. All Meg cared about right now was the possibility of running water.
Her sneakers squeaked on the old pine floor as she made her way toward the small door positioned to the right of what had once been the altar. Beyond it lay a room barely ten feet deep that served as both kitchen and storage space. An ancient, silent refrigerator, the kind with rounded corners, rested next to a small side window. The kitchen also held an old-fashioned four-burner enameled stove, a metal cupboard, and a porcelain sink. Perpendicular to the back door another door led to a bathroom more modern than the rest of the church with a toilet, white pedestal sink, and shower stall. She gazed at the X-shaped porcelain faucets and slowly, hopefully, twisted one handle.
Fresh water gushed from the spout. So basic. So luxurious.
She didn’t care that there was no hot water. Within minutes, she’d retrieved her suitcase, peeled off her clothes, grabbed the shampoo and soap she’d pilfered from the inn, and stepped inside. She gasped as the cold splashed over her. Never again would she take this luxury for granted.
After she dried off, she tied the silk wrap she’d worn to the rehearsal dinner under her arms. She’d just located an unopened box of saltines and six cans of tomato soup in the metal cupboard when her phone rang. She picked it up and heard a familiar voice.
“Meg?”
She set the soup can aside. “Luce? Honey, are you all right?” It had been almost two weeks since the night Lucy had run away, and that was the last time they’d spoken.
“I’m fine,” Lucy said.
