Emma's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Emma's cousin opened the door six inches and didn't unhook the chain. The porch light was off, and the desert wind pushed grit against Emma's ankles. Her cousin said the spare room wasn't going to work after all. She said her boyfriend didn't want a stranger sleeping down the hall, and she was sorry, she really was. Emma had driven two states to reach this door. She had left her dog with a woman who couldn't keep a promise about a bedroom. Emma didn't beg. She had spent two years being small and quiet and agreeable to keep a man calm, and the muscle for that was gone. She said okay and walked back to her car. She sat in the driver's seat with her hands on the wheel and did the math. Motel money would last four nights. After that she was sleeping in the back seat somewhere off the highway, alone, in a town she'd picked off a map because it sounded far. Tombstone at midnight. She'd met one person here worth remembering, a blond woman named Jenna who'd sat next to her at the counter of a diner that afternoon and asked where she was from without making it feel like a test. They'd traded numbers because Jenna said, plainly, that Emma looked like she needed one. Emma had laughed and put the number in her phone and not planned to use it. She used it. Jenna picked up on the second ring. Emma said the cousin thing fell through and she didn't know what she was doing. There was a pause on the line, then Jenna said, "Come here. We've got a place out back. You can stay as long as you need." Emma said she couldn't take a room off someone she'd known six hours. Jenna said, "I had a feeling about you at the counter. I'm not going to explain it. Just come." She gave the address and hung up before Emma could argue. The property sat at the end of a dirt road under a sky full of stars. Behind the main house stood a small stone building with a shaded porch and a lamp burning over the door. Jenna met Emma on the path with a key in her hand. A tall man stood on the porch of the main house with his arms crossed, watching. Jenna said, "That's my brother Grant. He looks like that at everyone." Grant didn't move. His eyes tracked Emma from the car to the guest house door, and something in his face changed once, quick, then closed again. Jenna pressed the key into Emma's palm. "Sleep. We'll figure the rest tomorrow." Emma stepped inside and shut the door, and for the first night in a year she locked it from her side.