Rayford knew he had much to be thankful for. Neither Irene―his wife of twenty-one years―nor Amanda―his wife of fewer than three months―had to suffer this world any longer. Raymie was in heaven too. Chloe and baby Kenny were healthy.
That should be enough. Yet the cliché consumed came to life for Rayford. He stormed out of the safe house in the middle of a crisp May Monday morning, eschewing a jacket and glad of it. It wasn’t anyone in the safe house who had set him off.
Hattie had been her typical self, whining about her immobility while building her strength.
“You don’t think I’ll do it,” she had told him as she raced through another set of sit-ups. “You way underestimate me.”
“I don’t doubt you’re crazy enough to try.”
“But you wouldn’t fly me over there for any price.”
Rayford stumbled along a path near a row of trees that separated a dusty field from what was left of the safe house and the piles of what had once been neighboring homes. He stopped and scanned the horizon. Anger was one thing. Stupidity another. There was no sense giving away their position just for a moment of fresh air.
He saw nothing and no one, but still he stayed closer to the trees than to the plain. What a difference a year and a half made! This whole area, for miles, had once been sprawling suburbia. Now it was earthquake rubble, abandoned to the fugitive and the destitute. One Rayford had been for months. The other he was fast becoming.
