Page 17 of Quarter Miles (Runaway 3)

“No, I’d like to find Aria.”

“Okay.” There was more behind her reasoning than reconnecting with an old friend, but I knew Kat’s tones well enough to recognize when a door was about to be slammed in my face. Time to try sneaking through a window. “This was Londyn’s car, right?”

“Yeah. She lived in it with Karson. He was the first one at Lou’s and kind of made it our place.”

“Wait. Who’s Lou?”

“The owner of the junkyard. I told you about him, remember?”

No, she hadn’t. Maybe she’d told Grandma but not me. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Lou Miley. He was this grumpy old recluse who lived there. One day, Lou came out of the shack where he lived and found Karson sleeping on an old car seat. Lou brought him a blanket. Karson had been sneaking in and sleeping there for a month by that point. I’m not sure if Lou knew the whole time or what, but he didn’t make Karson leave.”

It baffled me that an adult wouldn’t have called the authorities and rescued those kids. The few times she and Gemma had spoken about the junkyard, they’d made it seem like it was paradise. They’d preferred it to an actual home in the foster care system.

I didn’t get it, but I’d stopped trying to make sense of it.

Kat had done what she’d had to do at too young an age to make the best of a shitty situation. She was good at finding the bright side. Whenever we watched a bad movie, she’d spout three things she liked about it during the credits.

Once, we’d run out of coffee in the middle of a blizzard. The roads had been too snowy to traverse so she’d set up a tea station and tried to get me to like tea. I’d sampled every flavor from a variety pack that day, then lied and told her tea wasn’t so bad. It was shit compared to coffee, but she’d tried.

“Gemma was the second one to move to the junkyard. Her home was . . .” Kat shook her head. “It was awful. Has she ever talked to you about it?”

“No, and I never asked.” In the past six months, I’d gotten to know Gemma fairly well. The two of us worked side by side nearly every day and I couldn’t have dreamed up a better partner for Easton, not just because she adored my brother but because she was a damn riot. Feisty and sarcastic, confident and bold, Gemma hadn’t been born with the last name Greer, but she would wear it well. You’d never know her childhood had been hell.

“She doesn’t tell many people the story,” Katherine said.

Kind of like you.

I’d earned Kat’s trust in so many other areas. With horses, when I’d taught her to ride. With the stress from work, when she was the one who needed to vent. Hell, she trusted me to cook dinner every Wednesday without backup. So why wouldn’t she trust me with her past?

“Anyway,” Kat continued, “after Gemma moved to the junkyard, Londyn came next. Actually, Gemma hauled her there after she found Londyn trying to eat a sandwich from a garbage can.”

“Did you do that?” My stomach rolled. I hated this for her. “Eat garbage?”

“No, we never ate garbage. There was always food around. We’d have peanut butter and honey sandwiches. The trunk to the Cadillac was a great pantry. But if I never eat another banana, I’ll die happy. Same with green beans.”

“That’s why you don’t like Grandma’s green bean casserole at Thanksgiving or Christmas.” Mom would always send us home with some leftovers but Katherine wouldn’t touch it. I’d always thought she was just leaving it for me because it was my favorite holiday side dish.

Kat’s face puckered. “That’s a no on the green beans. It’s a miracle I can stand to eat pizza. Londyn waitressed at a pizza place and she’d bring us back pizza most nights she worked.”

“Heaven,” I teased.

She laughed. “Even you would have gotten sick of pizza.”

“Never.”

We didn’t get a lot of pizza at the ranch. Delivery to the boonies wasn’t an option, which was probably why I insisted on it whenever we visited a town with a Domino’s.

“Okay, keep going.” Please, keep going. “Tell me more about Aria.”

“She and Clara were a year younger than the rest of us. I think they might have come to Montana with us if we would have waited but . . . we had to get out of there.”

“Understandable. Were they mad?”

“No, I don’t think so. And it was better they stayed where it was safe until they turned eighteen. Karson promised to stay with them at the junkyard until their birthday. I assume he lived in this car until he left.”

It made sense now, why the car was supposed to get to California. “Londyn wants Karson to have the Cadillac.”