AllFreeNovel
Share Us
PROLOGUE
It’s hard to sum up this place. Hard to craft a sales pitch. It took me a while to get it right, but I needed the perfect thing that would persuade someone to take the plunge. I’m nothing if not persistent.
This is what I came up with.
Maybe you’re stuck. Maybe you’re sick of yourself. Maybe you want answers about who you reallyare.Maybe you want to make lasting relationships, true friends, not like the acquaintances you think you’re close to now. Maybe you think,If only I could get away. If only I had time to really think, really breathe. Everything would be better. I’d know what I want. I could change.
So come, then. Here, things are different. We have stunning sunrises every morning. Fresh food every day. Good company, always. Your children will grow up appreciating nature and community instead of burying their faces in screens. You’ll grow your own food, reallyfeelthe soil between your fingers. You’ll understand what life is supposed to be. You’ll get the answers you’relooking for. You’ll find peace. You’ll heal. Ipromise.Because here, you can start over. Here, you can be who you want to be. Here, we’re all friends. At different points of the day, we pause after screwing the lid on a mason jar, or conjugating a French verb with our children, or while we’re holding up the beam of the new shed, or while we’re trying to find the center of ourselves at meditation. And we think,We’ve really cracked the code.
You want that. Of course you do. So come. We’re living the dream. We’re becoming better selves. Out in the desert, with the stars as our witnesses. Out in the desert, with its natural beauty as our model and guide. Out in the desert, you can escape.
Pretty good, right? Admit it—I’ve got you curious. Not that it’s the real reason I want you here. It’s only the means to the end. But once I’ve hooked you? Once you arrive? You’reout in the desert…alone. And I’m waiting for you.
Because out in the desert, friend, no one can hear you scream.
PART
ONE
1
Lenna
October
Present day
The first troubling thing that happens when Lenna Schmidt arrives in Tucson is she nearly falls flat on her face on the Jetway. She catches herself and the baby using one of the ground transport guys’ shoulders.
“Whoa,” the man says, staggering backward. “You okay there, ma’am?”
“Fine, fine,” Lenna mutters, her cheeks blazing. “Sorry.”
“Think you frightened your little guy!” He gestures to Jacob, her five-month-old son, who has broken into a fresh round of sobs.
Lenna gives the guy a grimace-slash-smile. If only her baby were merely startled. There have been ten minutes of blissful silence since they began traveling. As Lenna walks down the ramp, her son’s screams rise in volume. She can hear passengers deplaning behind her groaning.There goes that baby again.
The Tucson airport is small, with only one terminal and a few shops that are open. Lenna walks hurriedly, bouncing Jacobineffectively and trying to convince herself that the fall and Jacob’s renewed cries aren’t some sort of omen that she’s made the wrong choice. Just in case, she squeezes her fist five times, counting the squeezes in her head, making sure she’s got it right. Then she searches the airport for something yellow.There.A bright yellow soccer jersey on that little kid.Better.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she repeats to the baby as he moans. Blearily, she pokes her head into various women’s bathrooms until she finds a changing table that seems somewhat sanitized. The diaper change helps his mood a little, and his screams trickle to whimpers. “All dry now,” she says cheerfully as they exit the bathroom.
But he starts crying again as they get to baggage claim. She needs to get the baby’s car seat, too, waiting next to at least twenty hard-case golf bags. Rhiannon told her to leave most of her possessions behind—That’s not what this place is about—but Lenna would feel naked without them. As she hefts a suitcase off the carousel, she hears little jars of Stage 1 baby food clinking. A few travelers give her funny looks. She wonders if they think she stashed a bunch of beer bottles in there.
An airport attendant helps her load her things on a luggage cart and push through the Ground Transport doors—Rhiannon said she can’t pick Lenna up personally, and that no buses come out to the community, and Lenna tries not to see this as an omen, either. The desert heat smacks her in the face as soon as she steps outside. It’s so stiflingly hot that it’s difficult to suck in a breath. Lenna’s lungs feel like they’re inside a pizza oven. There’s a shiny sedan waiting at the cabstand; a man with leathery skin, wearing a barn jacket, leans against a wide-open passenger door. The A/C wafts from within. Lenna gravitates toward it, zombielike.
The man perks up when he sees her. “Need a ride?”
After he’s helped her shove all of her things into the trunk andget the baby semisecure in the car seat, Lenna swings into the back seat next to Jacob. “Shh, shh,” she says, trying to fit a pacifier into his mouth. He swats it away angrily.
The cabbie catches her eye in the rearview. “Set a’ lungs on that one, huh?”
“Sorry.” Lenna wants to burst into tears herself. “He isn’t usually like this.” A lie. Jacob isalwayslike this.
She fishes a prepared bottle from the pocket of her backpack. She doesn’t want to get him too attached to bottles or formula, but it’s an emergency. Jacob accepts the nipple and falls silent. Lenna shuts her eyes.Peace.
The driver peers at her expectantly in the rearview mirror. “Oh. Sorry. The Texaco station just past Three Points on Ajo Way, please. There’s a mile marker, too….” It’s the address Rhiannon gave her. She repeated it over and over to herself on the plane ride like a chant.
He looks puzzled. “That’s almost an hour’s drive. And not much out there. You sure?”
