Chapter 1

Cassie was in her closet again.

It was a small closet, five feet wide and three feet deep, but it was lined with cedar, and a single lightbulb in the center of its ceiling gave it a golden hue. Cassie had been in a lot of closets over the years, and cramped as it was, this one ranked as one of the best. It didn't stink, for one thing. There had been no mothballs in the corners or mouldering boxes left by previous tenants to find when they'd moved in. No scarred and tattered wallpaper made the walls unfit for her purposes, either. That first day she'd swept a fine layer of dust off the floor and that was it; the closet was ready. As she'd stood in the cramped, tangy-smelling empty space, she'd felt a rush of adrenaline; maybe this time would be different - maybe this time she would get to finish what she started.

Now a bead of sweat ran down her spine, tickling her skin, and Cassie reached around to scratch her back with the pointed wooden end of her paintbrush. It was August and stifling in the little windowless room, but she barely noticed the heat; she was too intent on the wall that framed the closet door. As she shifted her weight, her clothes swayed on their metal hangers behind her and she bumped the suitcase laying on the floor in which she stored her underthings. Biting back a sigh of frustration - the room really was small - she moved again, considering the wall before her.

There; at the upper right of the door - that's where it would fit.

She dipped the brush into a pot of rubber cement and painted the wall, then pressed a picture she'd torn from a magazine into place among the rest. Stepping back, she bumped into the wire hangers again. She spun around and grabbed them, then tilted her head to the side and listened to make sure she could hear the patter of water on the enamel tub in the bathroom across the hall. Yes;  her mother, Renee, was still in the shower; she had time for one more.

The dining-room shot, she thought; the one with the family seated around the table. She pulled a new magazine out from under the clothes in her suitcase and opened it to a page with the corner turned down. She liked the curtains in that one - thick, brocaded fabric that hung in folds so deep you could store things in them, a far cry from the plain flat panels Renee reworked to fit the windows in each new house they rented. She glanced back at the wall in satisfaction; it would cover one of the few remaining empty spaces. Her premonition was right; this time she would surely finish covering the wall before they moved.

It's perfect, she thought. It was hard to find pictures like this, ones that conformed to all of her rules. They had to show an entire room. No lettering could mar the image. And if they featured a family, it had to be complete.

She tore it out carefully, but as it separated from the magazine, another page slipped out from behind it and floated to the ground at her feet. Cassie scowled down at it, her mood shifting at once. She should have thrown that one away.

Against her will she retrieved it from the floor, and as soon as her fingers closed around it she knew she would have to find its place on the wall. But not here; not among these happy images. She turned with a sigh, reluctantly pushed the hangers of clothing to one side of the rod, and faced the back of the closet. This was where she put the pictures she didn't want to see, the ones that sprang out at her when she thumbed through her magazines. She didn't mean to cut them out. She didn't want them on her closet wall.

But here they were.

Trees. Oaks, spruces, pines, aspens. Picture overlapped picture until a tangle of thick, green forest seemed to grow from the lower back corner of the closet and spread across the wall like a blossom of mold.

This is the last one, I'm not doing any more, she thought, swiping the rubber cement on the wooden paneling in short, thick strokes. She slapped the page on the wall and moved away to get a better look. A man with a chainsaw stared triumphantly back at her. He stood in a clearing ringed by woods, his foot resting on top of a tree he'd just severed from its stump.

The tree he'd killed.



"We leave in ten minutes. Hurry up." Renee poked her head into the bedroom where Cassie stood on the end of her cot and struggled to pull out the tacks that held up the curtains. "These are for the kitchen." She threw two boxes onto the floor and disappeared down the hall.

Cassie yanked the fabric and heard it rip, but she didn't care. Three more years, she told herself for the thousandth time. In three years she would be eighteen and she could run her own life. She would leave and never look back. I should leave right now. It was a familiar thought, but she knew that a fifteen year old girl wouldn't fare well out on her own. She had no desire to try living on the street. The way they lived now was bad enough, thank you very much. In a few years she would be old enough to get a real job. She would enroll in night school, get her GED, then she'd go to college. Her mother wasn't the only one who spent her days making plans.

She rolled the curtain into a bundle and stuffed it into a clear, plastic blanket bag that already held the rest of her bedding. Her suitcase stood in the center of the room. Cassie flipped the ends of her metal cot together and fastened it closed with two bungee cords.

Done.

Except...Cassie darted to the closet to grab the clothes hangers and stopped, arrested by what she saw. Without the rod full of clothing to hide it, the collage of forest pictures seemed to have grown even larger, its dark tendrils of color reaching toward the bright homey scenes on the opposite wall. It's taking over, she thought, and felt a familiar tug of longing for the days when she'd roamed freely through the woods behind her grandparent's house. Then she turned her back on the images. As much as they hurt her, the pain was nothing to the disappointment that threatened to overwhelm her as she took in the wall that framed the doorway.

She'd been so close. Three or four pictures would have filled in the empty gaps, and she could have found that many in the magazine now hidden underneath her clothes in her suitcase. Another day or two; that's all it would have taken. Cassie swallowed hard past a lump in her throat. What did it matter anyway? Nothing was ever going to change, no matter what she did. No wall of pictures could fix her life.

She left the closet and shut the door with a decided click, trying to blot out both sets of images. There would be no beautiful house filled with a happy family. And there was no going back to her grandparents' home in the woods. They would drive straight from here to the heart of another large city, and her mother would locate a row house to rent in its busiest district. The better to hide from your father, she'd say, but Cassie knew it went deeper than that; her father was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to her mother's fears.

"Cassie?" her mother called. "Hurry up!" Spurred back to the present, Cassie picked up the boxes and rushed out of the room.

Renee joined her in the kitchen, yanking open a drawer and scooping out their few pieces of silverware and cutlery. "Come on," she said. "It's been twenty minutes already. We need to leave soon."

Cassie sped up, emptying the cupboards of dishes, pots and pans, even as she told herself there was no reason to rush. She hated that her mother could still get this reaction from her, when she knew it was all a waste of time. Her father hadn't tracked them. He hadn't cunningly created an automated message to keep her on the line. He wasn't even looking for them anymore. Not after nine years. And yet her mother was always so sure he was. Just pack, Cassie told herself. Don't try to figure it out. What are we forgetting? She scanned the kitchen and spotted the refrigerator. Food.

Sometimes her mother wouldn't stop to eat.



Cassie pushed the ugly word away, but it was too late to stop the flood of memories. Like always, they overwhelmed her with their vividness. The cedar smell of the closet became the scent of sawdust in the clearing behind her grandparents' house, the cool floor became dry leaves as she ran barefoot through the trees. She heard men's voices arguing, and her mother's scream...

The shower turned off and Cassie froze, then jerked into action. She stuffed the magazines and glue back into her suitcase, kicked it to the rear of the closet, turned off the light, and burst out into her room, grabbing her dog-eared copy of Huckleberry Finn off the floor and leaping onto her cot as the bathroom door swung open.

Her mother walked out, wrapped in a towel that had seen better days.

"What are you up to?" she asked, leaning against the doorjamb.

"Reading." She had turned to a random page and now she tried to focus on the words before her.

Her mother frowned. "You must be reading it backwards now - you were further along this morning, weren't you?"

"It doesn't matter how I read it; I've practically got it memorized," Cassie said. She shut the book with a snap.

"Don't start," Renee said. "I would get you another one if I could. Anyway, it's time for bed."

She disappeared down the hall leaving Cassie digging her fingers into her blanket. What baloney. It wasn't that dangerous to go to a bookstore. Her mother always made things more dramatic than they needed to be.

She leaned over and picked her battery operated alarm clock up off the floor. It was small and square, made of black plastic with hands and numbers that glowed in the dark. With a glance at the empty doorway, she set it to 5:30 and slipped it under her pillow. Maybe she could wake up early and get a few minutes alone before her mother got up.

She heard her mother moving in her bedroom down the hall and with a sigh Cassie pushed herself up off the bed and trailed back over to the closet. She didn't turn on the light this time. Instead, she pulled out a clean t-shirt and pair of cut off sweatpants to sleep in. After brushing her teeth and depositing her dirty clothes in a plastic hamper in the bathroom, she hesitated in her doorway.

"Good-night," she called out, keeping her voice neutral. No sense letting on how angry she was and starting a fight at this late hour.

"Night, honey!"

Cassie rolled her eyes at her mother's cheerful tone. Shutting the door behind her, she flipped off the overhead light and lay down on top of her bed. It was too hot for covers. Too hot to sleep. She stared at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of the city street beyond her window. Car doors slammed. People shouted to each other. She heard the metal scrape of a trashcan being dragged to the curb. All the now-familiar noises of a Trenton evening. Still, Cassie wasn't comforted. She couldn't deny any longer that as bad as things had been for years, they were getting worse.



She was racing through an airport, carrying a dollhouse made of glass. Her mother's plane was about to land and it was crucial that she be there when her mother disembarked, but the airport was thronged with people and she darted one way and then the other, trying to get past them with the glass house intact. Suddenly she saw it through a parting in the crowd; Gate 18, the one she wanted. She let out a sob - half relief, half fear. Was she on time, or had her mother gone already? No, there she was. Cassie surged forward, just as a man wearing a grey fedora tilted to obscure his face stuck out his foot.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzz!

Cassie thrashed awake and scrambled to her knees, startled and disoriented. She knocked her pillow flying and heard the crash as her clock hit the floor and shattered in a spray of plastic pieces.

Just the alarm, she thought. She clutched her tangled covers to her chest, willing her heart to slow its frantic beating. Even this early in the morning, the sunshine was heating her bedroom to sauna temperatures, and her thin cotton t-shirt stuck damply to her shoulderblades.

She took in the room's high ceiling and the two tall windows that framed the back wall. The makeshift curtains didn't quite reach down to the windowsills, and from this angle Cassie could see the rust brown tiled roof of the garage at the back of their lot. It bordered an alley that bisected the block, but though they'd been here nearly three weeks now, she had yet to see it up close. Probably never will, she thought, letting the covers fall from her hands.

She listened intently, but the noise of the clock crashing to the floor didn't seem to have woken her mother. The only sound was the far-away whoosh of traffic from a freeway several blocks over. She climbed carefully out of her bed, crossed the room and opened her door, hesitating in the hall to listen again. Her mother's door was ajar and Cassie could just make out the sound of her even breathing. Still asleep. She crossed to the head of the stairs and made her way down them slowly, keeping to the inside of each tread so that none of them creaked. She paused in the entryway, amazed she'd made it this far, her pulse quickening as she lay her hand on the brass colored knob of the battered front door. Quit while you're ahead, Cassie, she thought. Mom will wake up any second now. She shouldn't go outside. She should not go outside. The last time she'd done so, her mother had caught her and she'd completely freaked out. They'd moved not once, but twice in a two-week period. The second time she'd fallen asleep in the van and when she'd woken up in the parking lot of a crumbling apartment building - their new home - her mother had refused to tell her where they were. For a month Cassie had convinced herself she was in Raleigh. She'd been wrong; it was Charlotte. Right state, wrong city. She pushed down the uncomfortable memory and tightened her grip on the handle. I'll only open it a little - just a crack, she thought. I won't actually go outside.

She turned the knob slowly, but once she felt the soft touch of a breeze against her cheek, she couldn't help herself; she opened the door wide and stepped out onto the cement stoop. The morning sun cast a mellow glow onto the ancient brick-fronted row-houses that lined the block, leaning together like drunks after an all-night binge. Four broad steps led to a cracked and buckled sidewalk. Up and down the street, trashcans sprawled in the gutters where the garbage men had tossed them after emptying them into their truck, but even they couldn't spoil the promise of the morning.

"Well, well," a man's voice drawled from somewhere close by. "The ghost comes out of its lair. In broad daylight, too. Taking a chance, aren't you?"



Cassie whirled around. An African-American man in his mid-twenties lounged on the neighboring stoop, his arms loose across his knees, his eyes heavy-lidded. He wore sweatpants and a faded red shirt, his hair shaved nearly to the scalp under a backwards baseball cap. In his hand was a bottle wrapped in a paper bag.

"A little girl ghost," he went on, his voice light but mocking. "Who woulda believed it?"

"I'm not a ghost," she said.

The man raised an eyebrow. "You move in at midnight about two, three weeks ago, white as can be in a black neighborhood, and you ain't showed yourself since. I say you're a ghost."

Cassie looked away. A magazine lay on the sidewalk in front of the neighbor man's stoop. She couldn't make out its title from here, but she itched to go retrieve it. "Maybe if you weren't drinking at five in the morning, you would know a human being when you saw one." She bit her lip. What a stupid thing to say.

The man chuckled and pulled the brown paper wrapper off of the bottle. "It's just orange juice, ghost. Gotta get my Vitamin C."

She felt her cheeks warm and she kept her gaze on the magazine, wanting to crawl back indoors and hide. And then wanting even more to stay right where she was.

"Go on, ghost, go get it - I won't bite," the man said, waving his bottle at the magazine. "It ain't doing anyone any good out there."

Cassie shook her head and began to withdraw toward the door. She wasn't supposed to talk to strangers. She wasn't supposed to talk to anyone. She ought to get back inside.

The man frowned at her, and now his voice changed and he straightened up. "Tell me, what's he look like, little girl ghost?"

"What does who look like?" Her voice sounded strange to her. High and thin, like she hadn't been using it enough.

"The man who's after you."

"I didn't say someone was after me."

"You didn't have to." The man leaned forward, like he might get to his feet and come right over. "It's plain as day. Why else would someone like you be livin' here?"

Cassie shook her head. Suddenly the daylight had lost its mellow shine. "I don't know what he looks..." she said and stopped short. "I don't know what you're talking about," she amended and ducked hurriedly back inside before the man could question her further. She shut the door quietly, locked it behind her and leaned against it. Had he just been guessing or had something given them away? A floorboard creaked above her head and Cassie glanced upward. Her mother was awake.

"Cassie?" Renee called out. "Is that you?"



Cassie darted soundlessly through the living room, past the two folding chairs and the box that served as a coffee table, past the portable television with its broken antenna. By the time her mother came downstairs and entered the kitchen, she was perched on the countertop, eating sections from the orange she'd grabbed out of the refrigerator and hastily peeled.

"You're up awfully early," her mother said.

"I couldn't sleep."

"The garbage truck was loud today."

Renee opened the refrigerator door and looked inside. Cassie could have told her what was in there: two more oranges, a block of cheese, a container of margarine and a tomato that had seen better days. Her mother pulled out an orange and closed the door again.

"What's going on today?" Cassie asked.

"Shopping, I guess. I'll wait until after dinner, though. We have enough food to see us through until then. Aside from that..." She trailed off with a shrug, but Cassie hadn't expected anything more. What else was there to do? Watch the one television channel that came through when they propped up the antenna? Wash yesterday's clothes out in the sink and hang them to dry in the shower? Maybe look out the window? Carefully - so they weren't seen.

"You should get back to your school work," Renee added.

"It's August, Mom," Cassie said. School. What a joke. She'd finished all her workbooks over a year ago. Her mother kept saying she'd buy more, but somehow she never did. Cassie missed the old days when they used get library cards for each new town they lived in. Back then, she'd taken out stacks and stacks of books to read. Even when her mother had decided it was too dangerous to sign up for a card, they had still gone and sat in the library, reading for hours tucked away among the shelves. But that was years ago. Now her mother refused even to do that. Cassie spit out a seed and caught it in her fingers. She missed books more than anything. The magazines she found now and then did little to fill the gaps.

They're better than nothing, though, she thought, regretting her earlier caution. She could have made it to the sidewalk and back in a second. A whole magazine was going to waste out there.

"Don't forget to exercise," Renee said, finishing her orange. "I'm going to get to work."

Cassie gathered up her orange peels and threw them away in the plastic grocery bag her mother had placed under the sink in lieu of a trash can. She washed her hands and dried them on her shorts, then stood in the middle of the dingy kitchen listening to her mother's footsteps on the stairs. Work. Right. That's what her mother called the hours she spent in her room going over their expenses and cash and maps, plotting and planning where to move next and how to keep a roof over their heads for the least amount of money. They had always lived cheaply, but Cassie couldn't help noticing that her mother was cutting more and more corners. The man next door was right; they didn't belong in this neighborhood.

She looked at the battered wooden cupboards and torn linoleum floor. At one time this house must have been new and spotless, but now it smelled of age and rot, and even she could see that it would be miserably drafty in the wintertime. Not that they'd be here then. She jumped off the counter, trying to shake the heaviness that settled around her heart at the thought of moving again. Exercise. That's what she needed. Cassie went into the living room and folded up the lawn chairs. She leaned them against the wall to make room and began the routine she and her mother had developed over the years. Stretches, calisthenics, exercises with hand weights. Then twenty times up and down the stairs. "Don't slip!" her mother called out from her bedroom. Cassie shook off a spurt of annoyance; her mother always said that.

Returning to the living room, she pulled the jump rope off a nail in the wall and turned on the television, fiddling with the antenna until she could make out the faces on the screen. She watched the morning news as she hopped in place. Fifteen minutes later she replaced the rope. Upstairs, she gathered the shattered remains of her alarm clock and tucked them out of sight, then found a fresh shirt and pair of shorts. As she headed for the bathroom to take her shower, she picked up her watch where it sat on the windowsill. Seven o'clock. Only sixteen more hours to kill until bedtime.




"Lock the door behind me," Renee said, pulling the straps of her purse over her shoulder.

"Yes, Mom." Cassie perched on one of the plastic chairs in the living room, squinting at a show through the fuzzy reception of the television set.

"Don't open it to anyone, you hear? No matter what."

"Mom. I know," Cassie said.

"Fine." Renee sighed. "I just worry about you, that's all. What if he came..."

Cassie looked up in exasperation. "Dad's not coming. There's nothing to worry about." She turned back to her show, ignoring her mother's scowl.

"I'll be back soon."

She kept her eyes on the screen while her mother pulled the door shut behind her, locked it and rattled the doorknob to make sure it wouldn't give. She didn't let herself think about the hundreds of other times her mother had left like this, locking her in, shutting a door between her and the outside world as if she could keep her safe forever. Cassie knew from experience that Renee would be back within the hour, out of breath as if she'd done the whole shopping trip at a sprint. That's probably exactly what she did do, she thought. Her mother saw her father in every shadow.

Several minutes later, a clatter in the hallway brought her upright in the hard plastic chair. Was her mother back already? Had she forgotten something? She leaned to the side so she could see the entryway. The mail slot in the front door flipped open and two dark eyes peered back at her briefly, then disappeared. Her breath caught in her throat as something pushed through the rectangular opening and spilled onto the tile floor.

"Enjoy it, ghost!"

The lid of the mail slot slammed shut again, but she had recognized the voice. She waited until she was sure the man was gone, her heart pounding, then she darted forward, picked up the magazine that lay on the floor and raced upstairs. She stashed it with the rest of them under her clothes in the suitcase in her closet, even though her fingers itched to leaf through it right away. She shut the door and walked to the center of her room slowly, more surprised by the events of the last five minutes than she cared to admit. No one had ever done something for her like that before. No one had ever even noticed her.

Cassie ran her fingers through her curly hair and smoothed it away from her face. She should go back downstairs. Her mother would be home soon and she couldn't even suspect that anything unusual had happened while she was gone. He'd better not make a habit of doing things like this. She'd get in trouble if he did. Big trouble. And then they'd leave.

Maybe I can sneak out again tomorrow morning and tell him, she thought, already anticipating the feel of the sun on her skin.

As if in response to this illicit idea, a noise blared out from her mother's room - the tinny ringtone of her mother's cell phone. Cassie frowned. Her mother always carried it with her. What was it doing in her bedroom? Could she be home already? Had she snuck in the back way to spy on her? Had she seen what the man had done? Fighting back a rising panic, she hurried to her door and looked out into the hall. The mechanical melody chimed out again, but otherwise the house was silent. Her mother must have forgetten to put the phone in her purse.

Who could possibly be calling? Cassie wondered, even as her heart sank. An incoming phone call was as good as an eviction notice; they would move tonight, the minute her mother realized what had happened. She slid noiselessly down the hall, one ear cocked for the sound of the front door opening. Entering her mother's room, she spotted the cell phone sitting on the plastic crate Renee used for a bedside table. Cassie grabbed it and flipped it open, staring at the screen. The caller's name was not displayed, but there was a phone number with an unfamiliar area code. 831. She'd never seen that one before.

Is it Dad? she wondered. That's what her mother would think. That was the reason they never picked up the phone. How would he have found their number, though? It can't be him, Cassie thought. He's probably not even chasing us anymore. Not after all these years. She stabbed the button defiantly and lifted the phone to her ear.

"Congratulations!" a cheery voice rang out. "You've just been entered to win a trip for four to..."

"What are you doing!"

Cassie winced and spun around, the phone still at her ear. Her mother stood in the doorway to the bedroom, her purse dangling from her fingertips. Her mouth was open, her face slack with shock.

"It's all right," Cassie said. "It's just a..."

Renee lunged at her and snatched the phone from her hand with such fury that it launched across the room and smashed into pieces against the wall. "You know you're not supposed to answer that!"

"It was a sales call," Cassie pleaded. "It was automated - it wasn't anything!"

"It could be your father. He could be on his way right now!" But Renee hesitated just a moment, just long enough for Cassie to think that this time it would be different; this time they wouldn't run. Then she nodded - a curt jut of her chin, and Cassie's shoulders slumped.

"Pack."




"Is this the last of it?" Cassie asked, helping her mother to lift her cot into their plain white panel van moments later. It was nearly ten at night, but the street was far from empty. On the contrary, she had noticed from her window that the neighborhood seemed to pick up steam as the evenings progressed. A couple weaved down the sidewalk, their arms entwined, probably heading to the bar around the corner. A teenage boy she didn't know ran up the steps four houses down and rang the doorbell. The door swung open and he rushed inside.

"Let's check and be sure."

She followed her mother back up the steps, but a movement next door caught her attention. The neighbor man was coming out of his house and he paused on his front stoop. Cassie hung back as her mother stepped inside.

"Taking off?" he said in the same lazy, knowing tone he had used early that morning. He was chewing on a toothpick and he shifted it to the other side of his mouth.

Cassie peered into the house, hoping her mother hadn't heard. She nodded at the man.

"Good luck to you, ghost."

"Thanks,' Cassie whispered. "For the magazine and for..." She trailed off. She had been about to say for talking to me, but she knew how lame that would sound. They'd exchanged a couple of sentences, that was all.

The man took the toothpick out of his mouth and looked down the street toward a corner where four or five men in their late teens or early twenties were loitering in the shadows. "Can't run forever, ghost. You remember that. Sooner or later you have to stop and turn around, face whatever it is." He glanced up and met her eyes, but Cassie heard her mother returning. She nodded quickly and turned away, hurrying up the remainder of the steps. When she looked back over her shoulder, the man was gone.

"That's everything," Renee said. She locked the door and shoved the house key through the mail slot. Sooner or later the landlord would come looking for rent and find it on the hall floor, Cassie supposed. She returned to the van and climbed into the passenger side, rolling down her window but finding no relief from the sticky closeness of the downtown summer night. She looked up the street as a car approached and stopped near the corner, near the group of youths. One young man leaned into the window of the vehicle and she thought she saw money change hands. When her mother opened the driver's side door of the van, several of them turned to look their way.

"Where are we going this time?" Cassie asked, eager to be off now.

"West," Renee said, throwing her purse on the floor. She slammed the door shut and started the engine quickly, giving the street her own once-over before pulling away from the curb. "Lock your door," she said and Cassie frowned, pressing the buttton down automatically. West? What did that mean? They'd always stuck to the east coast before. She noticed her mother's hands were shaking.

Renee met her eyes, then turned away. "We'll be okay. It’s just...money."

Cassie stilled. "What about it?"

"We're running out," her mother said. "It's almost gone."



"Are you sure she wants us?" Cassie asked two days later. They were driving across Colorado and the road stretched flat ahead of them to the horizon where a ridge of mountains reared up its spiny back. Normally she would have loved to see the Rockies, but there was nothing normal about this trip. Cassie dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands, fighting to stay awake, afraid that if she closed her eyes her mother would close hers, also, and they would run off the road to die in a twisted wreck.

Her mother refused to stop at a motel. "We have to make the money last," she said whenever Cassie brought it up. Twice they had pulled to the far side of a rest area parking lot and tried to sleep in the van, but the first time, in Ohio, they had been awakened by a seedy-looking man asking for cigarettes and the second time a policeman had knocked on the door.

"You can't sleep here, Ma'am," he had said in his Missouri drawl. "There's a motel down the road just a half-dozen miles."

"Thank you, Officer." Her mother had been all cool politeness, but Cassie wasn't fooled; she knew when her mother was afraid. Don't trust the police, Renee always said. Remember - anyone can be bought.

"You going to be okay, Ma'am?" the officer asked, his voice warm and solicitous. He bent closer to the window.

"Yes. I'll be fine," Renee said firmly and something in her voice had warned him not to press his luck. He backed off, touching his fingers to his hat, but after that she hadn't wanted to stop at all.

Now Cassie's eyes twitched from exhaustion and the glare of the setting sun on the road. She didn't know how her mother was staying awake. They couldn't go on like this, that was clear.

"Lisa wouldn't have asked us if she didn't want us," her mother said, recalling her back to the present. "She's an old and very dear friend."

"Friends are dangerous," Cassie said. It was one of her mother's favorite expressions. She bent over and turned the radio on, fiddling with the dial when there was nothing but static.

"I don't need to explain myself to you."

"When did you talk to her?" Cassie twisted the radio dial again. Nothing.

"I got in touch with her a few weeks ago."

"On the phone?" She couldn't keep the accusation from her voice. How else could her mother have talked to the woman? They hadn't had an internet connection in well over a year. They barely went out. Cassie waited, but her mother took her time answering.

"Yes," she said finally, keeping her attention firmly on the road.

"Who else did you call?"

"No one. I only talked to Lisa."

And you didn't tell me? Cassie wanted to ask her. You didn't pass me the phone so I could hear the sound of someone else's voice?

"We used to be best friends," Renee said, as if that explained everything.

It explains nothing, Cassie thought angrily. "Dad found us through her, then," she said. "That's why we got that weird message. And we're running right to him."

Renee shook her head. "I ditched that phone right after I spoke to Lisa. I have a new one now."

That wasn't good enough. It didn't explain why she was talking to the woman at all, why she would sneak around and lie by omission. That wasn't the way things were supposed to be between them. They told each other everything. They were in this together. Her mother was the only person she had spoken to in months, barring the man on the stoop today. If she had a friend...

Cassie had a flash - of herself asleep on her stupid cot and her mother hunched over the cell phone in her own room, sharing secrets with this woman. She twisted the dial again, hard.

"There aren't any stations," Renee said, but the radio blurted to life.

"...in Canada where a mass disappearance has authorities baffled."

Cassie reached for the dial, but her mother knocked her hand away. "I want to hear that."

"I want music."

"Cassie," Renee warned.

"...army has been called in to help search. Donald Riley is on the ground in Jasper, on the border between Alberta and British Columbia. Donald, what can you tell us?"

"Well, Amy, baffled is the right word. Jasper normally has a population of over four thousand people, and that number swells closer to five thousand during summer months. But today police, fire and rescue workers from other areas are the only inhabitants of this small northern town."

"Do you mean to say the whole town is gone?" the announcer asked. Cassie sat back in her seat, listening in spite of herself.

"The buildings are here, Amy. But the people are nowhere..." The radio cut out again in a buzz of static that made them both reach for the dial.

Renee turned off the radio abruptly. "That's all we need; people disappearing. They probably all joined a cult and killed themselves."

Her mother would say something like that, Cassie thought. She seemed to have no sympathy left for anyone these days. "Where is Alberta, anyway?" she asked, staring out at the distant mountains.

"You ought to know that," Renee said.



An hour later, Cassie washed her hands in the stained sink of a gas station rest room and stepped out into the fading light of early evening. The peaks of the Rocky Mountains had inched their way higher into the sky, but still seemed far away. Now and then a car or truck rumbled past on the highway, but in between times things seemed unnaturally still. She was used to the constant hum of the city - traffic, music, voices. Now all she heard was the wind ruffling a plastic bag that had become tangled in a scrubby bush. Her mother was still inside the station paying for their gas, so Cassie walked across the broken pavement of the parking lot to stretch her legs. To her right, a battered picnic table leaned precariously, flanked by two or three dispirited pines. Cassie edged in that direction and was rewarded by the sight of two magazines lying forgotten on its bench. They were somewhat worse for wear, their covers tattered, but most of their inside pages were salvageable. She turned her back on the station and stuffed them into her purse.

Her mother opened the door and headed toward the rest room. Spotting Cassie, she hesitated and pointed meaningfully toward the van. Cassie nodded and waved, acting as if she would return to the vehicle immediately, but as soon as her mother disappeared into the ladies room, she changed direction and made for the patch of trees.

They were really pathetic, she thought as she approached them, but the smell of pine needles drew her closer. Responding to an impulse she didn't entirely understand, she kicked off her flip-flops and let her toes explore the short, dry grass around their roots. She closed her eyes, drinking in the last rays of sunshine, and felt the whisper of a breeze play with her hair. The air was sharp here with a mountain tang, and the ground, though dry, felt rich with possibilities against the soles of her feet. This is where I belong, Cassie thought. Not trapped in a house in some stupid city.

"Cassie!"

She snapped out of her half-daze to find her mother standing on the edge of the pavement.

"Get in the van. Now!"

There was something wild in her mother's voice, as if her disobedience, rather than the days of driving or their lack of cash, was the last straw, the setback that would drive her to the brink. Cassie jerked away from the trees and slipped her sandals back on her feet, cutting off her connection with the dirt. She felt vaguely aware that something unusual had happened, but she wasn't sure what. All she knew was that for an instant - a blink of an eye - she'd felt almost at home. She hurried to her mother's side, trying to hold on to the feeling. "I needed a walk," she said, but her mother ignored that.

"We'll be there by tomorrow night," she said, whether to reassure herself or Cassie wasn't clear.



The van drifted to the right and Cassie woke with a start. Forested slopes slipped past outside her window. It was nearly midnight, she saw with a glance at the clock. She'd been asleep for several hours. Sitting up straighter, she reassured herself that the van was still on the road and everything was all right.

"Where are we?"

"We're leaving San Jose, going over the Santa Cruz Mountains. The town is on the other side," her mother said.

"What town?"

"Santa Cruz," Renee said irritably, as if Cassie hadn't been paying attention.

"Is that where we're going?"

Renee nodded and Cassie grabbed the door handle as they approached a sharp curve. Long, black scrape marks scarred the concrete dividers between the lanes, evidence that other drivers had lost control on the treacherous road, but her mother seemed alert. She hunched over the wheel, gripping it like a sailor determined to steer a course through a storm.

Cassie had no idea how she'd stayed awake this long. The past twenty hours had been the most brutal of the trip. First they'd driven through the Rockies, the van's brakes burning as her mother decelerated down the long hills. Then came Utah's ghostly salt flats and Nevada's desert. By the time they reached California, Cassie's head was pounding from being awake far too long, and she had felt like she might be sick.

They parked briefly at another gas station, the windows rolled all the way down so Cassie could breath some fresh air, but the fumes made her feel worse and when she suggested a short walk her mother snapped at her as though she'd asked for a trip to Disney World.

Back on the highway, they had threaded through more mountains toward the Sacramento Valley, the road pulsing in the afternoon heat. In the early evening, a wrong turn in San Francisco led them in circles for over an hour. Cassie finally convinced her mother to stop and ask directions at a hole-in-the-wall taco bar where they didn't eat. They'd filled up on crackers and oranges instead that tasted all the more stale after the restaurant's rich salty smells.

She'd wiped her hands on the last of the paper towels and curled up in her seat, facing the window so her mother wouldn't see the tears that slid down her cheeks. She was past exhaustion, past hunger, into a place where the hum of the van's wheels blotted out everything else. Was this her future - this perpetual journey in which they ran and ran without beginning or end?

Renee expelled an impatient breath, recalling Cassie to the present. She was scowling up at the black shroud of trees blanketing the slopes to either side of the highway. "It's too dark here. This road is ridiculous; they should have cut that forest way back."

Cassie suppressed a sigh of exasperation; the terrain had been making her mother nervous for days, but it wasn't the trees that made this road difficult to follow - it was the sharp curves it took while ascending the mountain.

Headlights flashed in the rear-view mirror, and both of them looked up. A vehicle approached swiftly, muscled up behind them and tailgated their bumper before swerving to pass them. It was a Jeep, its sole inhabitant staring straight ahead, intent on the road.

"He's in a hurry," Renee said.

As the Jeep's taillights sped away, they they were left alone on the road again. They crested a hill and the highway evened out, so that for an instant Cassie felt like they were floating on air.

"There's the ocean!"

She just glimpsed it - an expanse of black edged with lights - before the road dipped, plunging them back into the trees. The highway curved abruptly and Renee slammed on the brakes, skidding toward the shoulder.

"Slow down!" Cassie cried.

Her mother got the van under control in seconds, but it was some time before Cassie's pulse reverted to normal speed. The road wound downward like a racetrack in a videogame until she felt her stomach revolt.

"How much farther?"

"We ought to be out of these mountains soon." As her mother said it, her words came true. The van shot out from among the trees onto a straightaway through an industrial district. Squat square office buildings flitted by to her left. On her right she glimpsed stores and restaurants.

"Is this it?"

"Not quite. We're close, though," her mother said. They passed the unmistakable shape of a palm tree silhouetted black against the dark gray sky. We’re in California, Cassie thought, and suddenly it felt real. "Look for Highway One," Renee said, and Cassie inched closer to the window.

"There it is," she called a few minutes later. Renee signaled to turn, but a vehicle was hunkered at the bottom of the ramp - the black Jeep.

"Stupid place to park," Renee said as she negotiated around it, but the next moment she straightened with something like excitement. "Look, there it is!"

The town spread out below them as the ramp curved up to the highway. A row of tall trees stood sentinel to their right, as if guarding the grid of streets, and the dark expanse of the ocean bounded it in the distance.

Out of nowhere, a flare of light shot up and exploded into flames. Cassie reared back in shock as it ignited the first of the trees in a burst of sparks. The fire quickly spread to the next one in line.

"Oh, my God!" Cassie gasped and her mother bent forward and followed her gaze. A breeze fanned the flames into tattered banners. The third tree went up like a match.

"What on earth?" Renee breathed, but Cassie was already searching for the source of the fire. The van's headlights swung along the curve, catching a man for an instant in their bright beams. He was tall and powerfully built, with a long, black braid snaking down his back. Something burned in his hands and as Cassie watched, he raised them, drew one arm back and let go. The flaming arrow arced up and crashed into the remaining tree. He slung the bow over his shoulder and Cassie spun around to watch him jog back down toward the jeep.

"Did you see that?" she cried.

Renee screamed. Metal crunched. Cassie slammed forward, then back, and the world went dark.



Cassie opened her eyes and touched her forehead where the skin of her right temple was already ballooning tight. Lowering her hand, she saw blood on her fingers. A brown sedan sat askew on the highway ahead of them and she could make out a man inside it lifting his hands up in the air in an angry question. The front of the van was crumpled and a spiderweb of cracks trailed outward from the spot where her head had connected with the windshield.

"Are you all right?" she asked her mother, who remained motionless, clutching the steering wheel until each of her knuckles stood out white. "Mom?"

"I saw you hit the window," her mother said, her voice tight. "There was this sound - I thought I'd killed you." Her face crumpled into a silent cry.

"I'm fine," Cassie said and she slipped off her seatbelt. Her mother was making empty, wracking noises that were worse than tears, slumping down over the steering wheel until her head rested on her hands. "I got a bump, Mom, that's all; everything's fine."

"It's not fine." Renee sat up and then doubled back over, gasping with pain. "Ow. Oh, my God."

"Mom? Are you...where are you going?"

Her mother dragged her sleeve over her eyes and pushed the door open, stumbling out of the van. She weaved her way toward the car ahead of them, one hand holding her ribs, and Cassie watched helplessly as she knocked on its window. A man stepped out. He was tall, with a pot-belly that sagged over his faded jeans. He waved at the damage to the rear of his automobile, his angry voice audible to Cassie although his words weren't. Her mother raised a hand to stop him, pointing at the burning trees, then pulled out her wallet and counted out some bills.

Cassie held her breath. What was she doing? Weren't they supposed to be exchanging insurance cards? But then she understood. Her mother was paying him off; she was paying cash and making the problem disappear. No police, no insurance companies, no trace.

God forbid they leave a trace.

The man shrugged and grabbed the bills, climbing back inside his car with a parting remark. Her mother ignored him and hobbled back to the van.

"Well, that's that," she said as she opened the door, her voice unnaturally high. "That's the end of the money. We'd better get out of here before the police show up."

"What about the fire?" Cassie asked. She eased back into her seat and re-did the belt. Overhead, the flames burned brighter as the fire spread. Little pieces of ash floated down, some still glowing. The Jeep was gone.

"Someone will take care of it," her mother said. She started the van and sighed with relief when the engine turned over. She pulled around a small pile of broken glass and sped up. At the next exit she turned off of the highway, taking city roads out in the direction of the ocean.

Each time they passed a street lamp a little explosion of pain burst through Cassie's temples, but she was more worried about her mother. Renee kept her left hand pressed against her side and drove with her right, her face gray and strained. Soon they turned onto a short, dark, dead-end street and pulled up in front of a shingled two-story house with a gated courtyard. Her mother checked the address and parked the van.

"This is it."




"Aren't we going to the hospital?"

The front door of the house opened and a beam of light cut through the night, spilling over a wooden porch and a flagstone path. A large woman stood in the doorway.

"Renee?" she called out. "Is that you?"

"Lisa? Cassie's mother peered at the shadowed figure uncertainly.

"You made it! Finally!" The woman hurried down the steps, her bulk jiggling under a maroon dress that could have made a small tent.

This is Mom's friend? Cassie thought. She didn't know what she expected - someone more like her mother, maybe; thin and angular and sharp-eyed.

As Lisa drew near, Cassie saw that though she was heavy, she was not a woman who had let herself go. She was tastefully made up, her blond hair neat and stylish. She faltered when she reached the van and took in the damage to the bumper and windshield, but forged ahead with a welcoming smile. Renee schooled her features into a similar expression as she opened the door and stepped out stiffly. Cassie followed suit, coming around the van to join them.

"We had a little accident, but we're just fine," Renee said. "It's so good to see you."

"Are you hurt? What happened?"

"I took my eye off the highway for one minute." Renee's tone was light, as if she were telling a funny story at a cocktail party. "There were trees on fire."

"Eucalyptus trees, right? Unbelievable!" Lisa shook her straight blond bangs out of her eyes.

Renee hesitated for the first time. "How...?"

"It's always eucalyptus. Someone has it in for them around here." Lisa waved it off and took both of Renee's hands in hers. "But it doesn't matter - you're here now and it's been so long. Let me look at you." She bounced on her toes like an excited child. "And who is this?"

"This is my daughter, Cassie," Renee said. "Cassie, this is Lisa."

Cassie tried to smile politely, but her head had begun to swim. "It's nice to meet you," she managed to say.

"You can't believe how long I've waited to meet you," Lisa said. "My goodness, she looks just like you, Renee. You must be so proud. Come in, let's get you settled. We'll talk all night."

Renee's smile flickered, just for a moment, but Lisa caught it and bent closer. "What's wrong? Are you sure you're not hurt?"

"It's nothing - I...Oh, hell, Lisa - I think I cracked a rib."



They walked through the wrought-iron gate and up the flagstone path to the porch, where Lisa helped Renee negotiate the two steps to the front door. Cassie followed them anxiously, but Lisa seemed calm and confident, joking with her mother as she led her inside. Even in the dark, the house tugged at Cassie's imagination with its broad windows and thick rough-hewn beams. Inside, she found gleaming woodwork, polished floors and graceful furniture arranged with an artist's touch. There were photographs of the sea in all of its moods, and bowls of shells and bits of driftwood on every flat surface.

"You can have my room. I'll put Cassie upstairs and I'll sleep in the den tonight." Lisa led them into the kitchen and eased Cassie's mother into a chair, handing her a steaming mug of herbal tea. "Have you eaten? I could whip something up."

"We're fine, we ate on the road," Renee said. She spoke in normal tones, but Cassie could tell she was nearly faint with pain. And there was something else - something wrong; as if Lisa wasn't the woman her mother had expected to find.

"I'll just take Cassie up to her room and then we'll get you to bed, Renee. You look ready to collapse," Lisa said. She led Cassie upstairs to a small room that overlooked the street. She showed her the bathroom down the hall and found an extra blanket for the bed. "It gets cool here at night when the fog comes in," she warned.

Cassie trailed a hand down the lacy bedspread, suddenly shy.

"Are you all right, honey?" Lisa asked. "You got quite a bump there. Do you need some aspirin?"

"I'm fine," Cassie said. "It's a beautiful bed."

The woman smiled, glancing over the four-poster. "Thank you. It was mine when I was a child and I shipped it out here from New York when I bought the house. Your mother and I used to hang sheets from the posts and pretend we were camping when we were little girls. Speaking of your mother..." She headed for the door.

"Lisa," Cassie called after her. She was bursting with questions, but when the woman turned around she found herself reluctant to ask any of them; her mother wouldn't like it, so she only said, "Thanks for having us."

"Are you kidding? This is a dream come true. You have no idea how long I've planned for this day," Lisa said with a smile. She went out of the room and shut the door behind her.

Cassie stripped off her shorts and sandals and slid between the cool, crisp sheets. Her head was pounding and the room heaved when she lay down, but she didn't care. This was heaven. It had to be. A queen-sized four-poster bed. A beautiful room. Before she knew it she was fast asleep.