Page 19 of Dread

I met her gaze. Held it. Said nothing.

There was nothing to say. The evidence was all there -- the bandage, the blood, Ellie choosing to run to me instead of waiting, still leaning against my chest with the trust of someone who had found what she was looking for and saw no reason to let go.

Katy’s hand came down from her throat. The glass lowered to her side. She stood in the hard afternoon sun and watched her daughter sleep against the shoulder of a man she’d met on a highway days ago.

Her gaze lifted to mine.

Neither of us said anything. There wasn’t much we could say with Ellie between us, trusting me enough to sleep.

Katy looked at her again, and this time she smiled. Just a little.

Ellie’s breathing had eased into the deep, even rhythm of someone properly asleep. Her body against me was heavy and complete, trusting, the surrender of a body that has decided it doesn’t need to hold itself up anymore.

I stayed where I was, one knee in the gravel, Ellie asleep against me. Days ago, she’d been a little girl stranded beside a highway. Now she trusted me enough to sleep in my arms.

Chapter Seven

Katy

Two days ago a car had idled at the end of the compound road for the better part of an hour. Not inside the gate -- the county side, where the gravel met asphalt and anyone could park without explaining themselves. I’d watched it from the townhome window while Ellie napped, a dark sedan I didn’t recognize, engine running, no one visible behind the glare on the windshield. It pulled away before I worked up the nerve to mention it to anyone. I told myself it was nothing. I’d told myself that before, about other cars, in other places, and I’d been wrong often enough that the telling had stopped meaning anything.

I started with Ellie’s things.

The small dresser in the bedroom held less than I remembered. Eight days in the compound had scattered Ellie’s things through the townhome -- a T-shirt over the back of the kitchen chair, socks under the coffee table, pajamas abandoned near the bathroom.

I gathered them one by one. Somehow, packing them felt different than unpacking had.

The duffel bags lay open on the bed. Three of them, lined up side by side on the queen mattress that still held the impression of my body from last night’s sleep. I’d packed the same way I unpacked -- Ellie first, then me. Her clothes went into the smallest bag, folded in the methodical squares I’d perfected out of necessity: corners meeting corners, seams aligned, each item compressed to its minimum volume. The dinosaur pajamas. The torn denim shorts from yesterday’s tumble in the gravel. The socks, paired and rolled.

The window above the dresser framed the SUV. Hector had delivered it two hours ago, pulling through the compound gate in his tow truck with the blue Ford trailing behind him like something returning from exile. Hector hadn’t charged for that. Just nodded when I asked about the bill and said it was taken care of.

Taken care of. The words sat in my throat like a stone I’d swallowed wrong.

I reached for Ellie’s hoodie -- the gray one with the frayed cuffs, the one she slept with sometimes when the nights got cold in strange places. My fingers touched the fabric and the doorway filled.

Ellie stood with her arms crossed tight over her chest. Her bandaged knee was visible below the hem of her shorts, the gauze I’d changed this morning still clean and white against her skin. She’d been outside all afternoon, running with the Prospects’ kids along the fence line, her laugh carrying back to the townhome in bright, unconcerned waves. Now she was still. Completely still. Her shoulders had that set to them, the one that meant she’d made a decision and was prepared to stand in it until something gave.

I kept folding the hoodie. My hands knew the motion. Quarter-fold, then half, the sleeves tucked in. The fabric was soft from washing. Worn thin at the elbows.

“I don’t want to go.”

Her voice was small. Level. The kind of small that comes from somewhere deep and steady, not the performative whine of a child testing boundaries. I set the folded hoodie in the bag. Reached for a pair of leggings.

“I don’t want to leave the compound.” A hitch now. A catch in her throat. “I don’t want to leave Doc.”

I set the leggings down. Crouched in front of her, my hands finding her shoulders -- warm from the afternoon sun, the skin under my palms carrying the heat of a child who has been running. Her face was dry but her eyes were wet, the lower lids full and shining, and her jaw was set in a line so rigid I could see the muscle flexing beneath the skin.

“Hey.” My thumbs moved over her collarbones, a gesture so automatic I didn’t remember deciding to make it. “We’ll be okay. We always figure it out, right? We always find our way.”

The answer came automatically. I’d said it in Wichita when the landlord raised the rent, in Cedar Rapids after I realized someone was watching us at the grocery store, and in more apartments, motels, and borrowed bedrooms than I wanted to count.

“We always figure it out.”

What I never said was that figuring it out usually meant packing.

Ellie didn’t nod. Didn’t uncross her arms. Didn’t step into the space my crouch had opened for her. She stood in the doorway with her bandaged knee and her set jaw and her gaze holding mine with a clarity that no seven-year-old should have to wield, and the practiced answer dissolved between us like sugar in cold water.

I stood. Picked up the leggings. Folded them. Set them in the bag. Reached for a T-shirt.