Don't Look Back

Chapter 1:

Two years ago

I had blood on my hands and a baby on my hip and I didn't look back.

That's what you're supposed to do, right? Don't look back. Lot's wife looked back. Lot's wife is a pile of salt. I learned that in Sunday school before I stopped believing in God.

I looked back anyway.

Big mistake. Huge.

Because the black sedan was still there. Headlights off. Engine running. And a man was standing by the driver's door with his hands in his pockets, watching me like he had all the time in the world.

I ran faster.

Lily didn't cry. That's the part that still messes me up, two years later, sitting in a diner at six in the morning with a coffee going cold in front of me. Two years old and she didn't make a single sound. She just put her little hand on my neck and held on.

Babies know when mama is running for her life.

The blood wasn't mine. I need to say that first. The blood was Damon's, and he was alive when I left him, and that's all I'm gonna say about that part.

Okay. That's a lie.

I'll say one more thing about that part. He was alive. He was on the kitchen floor with his nose bent sideways and his own lamp in his hand, and I was the one who put it there. I'm not proud of it. I'm not sorry either. There's a difference.

Lily turned two on a Tuesday. I left on a Wednesday.

I had three hundred dollars, my daughter's diaper bag, a driver's license that wasn't real anymore, and a car I borrowed from my cousin's boyfriend and promised to bring back.

I did not bring it back.

Sorry, Marcus. Not that Marcus. A different Marcus. My cousin's boyfriend. He's probably still mad.

The sedan followed me for eleven miles and then it just — stopped.

That's worse, by the way. A car that follows you is a car you can plan for. A car that stops is a car that already knows where you're going.

I got off the highway at the first exit. Pulled into a gas station that was closed. Killed the lights. Sat there with my hand over Lily's mouth — gently, so gentle — and watched the road.

Nothing.

Nothing for four minutes. Five. Six.

Then a motorcycle passed the station. Slow. Real slow. One headlight, one guy, leather jacket, no helmet.

He didn't stop. He didn't look at me. He just rolled past like he was out for a night ride and kept going.

I sat there for another ten minutes because my mama didn't raise a fool.

Okay. My mama raised a fool. She raised a fool and then she left, but that's a whole different chapter and we'll get there.

I waited ten minutes, then I drove.

---

Here's what nobody tells you about running.

Running is boring. Running is a two-year-old with a fever in a motel room in a town you can't pronounce, and counting out quarters for Motrin. Running is a job application where you use a name that isn't yours and your hand shakes so bad you spell it wrong. Running is a man at a grocery store who looks like your ex for one second from the wrong angle, and you abandon a full cart in the frozen aisle.

Running is not a movie. Running is a stomach ache that never goes away.

But it's better than staying. It's better than the way he'd wait until Lily was asleep and then start talking in that voice. That quiet voice. The one that means the nice part of the night is over.

So. Two years.

I got a job at a diner. Rita's. Owner's name is Rita, which is convenient. She hired me the same day, which should have been a red flag, but I needed money and she needed a waitress, so we both pretended not to notice.

I got a tiny apartment on the second floor with a window that sticks and a neighbor who plays music at 2 AM. I got Lily into a daycare run by a woman named Delphine who calls her "my little peanut." I got a routine.

Waitress by day. Mama by night.

No men. No touch. No trust.

That's the rule. Three rules. I wrote them on the inside of my closet door so I'd see them every morning. Pathetic? Yeah. Whatever. It works.

I don't get close to anybody. I don't flirt. I don't let a man buy me a coffee. When a guy at the diner asks for my number, I say "I don't have a phone," and he looks at the phone in my hand and I stare at him until he leaves.

Delphine asked me once why I never go out.

I said I'm tired.

She said, "Girl, you're twenty-four years old. You're not tired. You're scared."

I said, "Same thing."

And she looked at me for a long time and then she hugged me, which I did not ask for, and which made me cry in the back room for six minutes, which was embarrassing, and which I would deny if you asked me about it.

So that was my life. Small. Quiet. Boring. Safe.

Boring is a luxury. I love boring. I'd marry boring if boring asked me.

---

Now. The man.

There was a man.

He came into Rita's three times that week. Same time, same booth, same coffee, black, no sugar, no food. Sat with his back to the wall, which — okay, I noticed that immediately. People who sit with their back to the wall are either cops or criminals or people who've been hurt.

He was too big for the booth. Like the booth was designed for a regular man and he just came in and sat down anyway. Big hands. Big shoulders. A tattoo on his neck that I could see the edge of and not the rest.

He never looked at me. Not once. That's how I knew he was looking at me.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

Thursday I said something. I don't know why. I had a coffee pot in my hand and he was at the counter instead of the booth, which was already weird, and I said, "You want a refill or you just gonna sit there staring at nothing?"

He looked up.

And I felt it. I don't know how to explain it. It wasn't butterflies. Butterflies are cute. This was — my whole body went quiet. Like every alarm I'd been carrying for two years just shut off at the same time.

He said, "Refill."

That's it. That's the whole conversation.

I poured the coffee. My hand didn't shake. I walked away and I went in the back and I put both hands on the counter and I breathed like I'd been underwater.

Delphine came back. "You good?"

"Yeah."

"Your face is red."

"It's hot back here."

"It's forty degrees, Ella."

"Delphine."

"Mm."

I didn't tell her. What was I gonna say? A man ordered a coffee and my bones went quiet? That's not a sentence. That's a problem.

So the man came back Friday. And Saturday he came in the morning, which he never did, and he sat in my section and ordered nothing and just sat there, and I served eleven tables and every single one of them felt his eyes and none of them could say why the room was tense.

Sunday he didn't come.

Sunday was the worst day I'd had in two years.

---

Monday, Rita pulled me into the office.

"Ella. Honey. I need a favor and I need you not to say no."

"I'm gonna say no."

"Blackwood needs a waitress tonight. Their girl quit."

"Who's Blackwood?"

She looked at me funny. "The bar. Over on Harrow. You know it."

"I don't know it."

"Everybody knows it." She sat down. "Listen. It's one night. It pays triple. You just carry drinks and you don't ask questions and you don't look anybody in the eye."

"Why doesn't their girl work there anymore?"

Rita was quiet for a second too long. "She quit."

"Rita."

"She quit, Ella."

I looked at her. She looked at me. There was a whole conversation in that look and neither of us said one word of it.

I should have said no. Any normal person would have said no. There were sirens in that silence.

But I had rent due Friday, and Lily's shoes were too small, and I have this thing where I think I can handle anything if it's just one night.

So I said yes.

And she said the thing that I still hear in my head. The one that wakes me up at night sometimes.

She said, "Ella. Whatever you do. Don't tell him your real name."

I said, "Don't tell who?"

But she was already out of the office with the door closed behind her.

---

Chapter 1 Ends.