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So I must run.
But I tried to bargain with myself; I could run next month. Right?
I won’t show up till next month. But the sane side in my head tells me otherwise.
Who says you’d be ready to leave him next month, Rosalie?
I’d never want to leave him.
So before things run deeper and more dangerous, I should leave before we become even more of something.
It’ll be less heartbreaking now than later.
Suddenly, my body feels like it is reverberating.
Every muscle, every cell, every inch. I need to run. I need to not think, just focus on breathing.
I carefully step up, grab the robe, and run to my room.
I get dressed for a jog, wear my sneakers, and leave his house.
It’s late, almost midnight, but the streets of Illinois are deserted, giving me free rein to run. I run, and my worries become small.
I take in the night - the stars shining and scattered light from neon signs and street lights.
I listen to the chirping of crickets and distant cattle mooing in pastures that fit like a glove into suburbs like this one, small yet hospitable.
I pass by houses with plush gardens full of blooming buds of purple lupine, strawberries still ripe for picking, lemons for squeezing, and tomatoes for chomping away at whatever comes between them.
The lush smell of nature blending in with city sewage assails my nostrils as I continue running off a beaten track.
After the run, I will head home, shower, and change.
I’ll pack in the dead of night. I’ll leave before the sun is up.
But where will I go? I can’t go back to The White Rabbit.
I need to take all the cash I can find and hide somewhere so no one can trace me until I discover my next steps.
I am so lost in my thoughts that it’s no wonder I didn’t hear them coming.
And by the time I did, it was too late, for I saw them before I heard them.
Maybe if I had heard them, I could have hidden.
Three pick-up trucks block the road ahead, with no way to turn back. The doors open, and
“Shit,” I swear under my breath as I start to run, faster and faster, until I trip over a rock and find myself in the dust.
“Ah! You can run, but you can’t hide.”
Strong bodies- tall, larger-than-life figures, surround me and cut off my escape route.
I suddenly remember I’m pregnant.
And that thought seeps me with the kind of fear I’ve never known before. The old me would have stood up and fought.
With a baby in her, this version of me feels like a deer in the headlight.
