He pushed a slip of paper toward me.
“She’s at Grace Haven Women’s Shelter, in Pine Hollow. Fifty-two minutes from here. She cleans the feed store at night. She takes the twins in a carrier because nobody will keep them.”
“She collects cans on Sundays.”
“Two hundred cans buys a week of formula.”
In my wallet, the twenty-dollar bill pressed against my ribs like a second pulse.
I did not go home.
I sat in my truck in the diner lot with the engine off and the rain starting, and I read Emily’s name on the slip of paper until the letters stopped meaning anything.
My phone lit up.
Ashley.
Where are you? Dinner at 8.
I watched it buzz until it went dark.
Then I did something I had not done in a year.
I did not answer.
I turned the key.
The shelter was a converted Methodist parsonage at the end of a gravel road, white paint peeling in long curls.
