When the officer arrived to take them to the apartment, Hank walked Sarah to the side exit. He carried her apron, which somebody had folded into a clear bag. Seeing it there was strangely humiliating. Her name badge faced outward. Sarah. As if she needed proof of who she had been three hours earlier.
“I'll follow,” he said.
She looked at the motorcycle parked beyond the glass doors.
“You don't get to decide where I go.”
“I know.”
“You don't get to call me sweetheart because it worked in the diner.”
His expression changed. “I know that too.”
She took the bag.
After a moment she said, “You can follow.”
He nodded without making more of it than she could bear.
Her apartment was on the second floor of a narrow building above a dry cleaner. The stairs smelled of hot cotton and somebody's lunch. A bicycle leaned against the wall where the landlord had told its owner six times not to leave it.
Toast began shouting before Sarah put the key in the lock.
The officer, a woman named Patel, asked Sarah to wait while she checked inside. Ruth stood beside her on the landing. Hank remained at the bottom of the stairs because Sarah had asked him to.
When Patel called them in, Toast shot through the doorway and wound around Sarah's ankles with furious devotion.
She picked him up. His warm body, his ridiculous weight, his offended little grunt when she held him too tightly nearly broke her.
“I know,” she whispered into his fur. “I know.”
Ruth looked around the small room with the care of somebody who did not want looking to become an invasion. A thrift store couch. Plants on the sill. A stack of library books beside an old lamp. Bills held to the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a pear.
Sarah followed her gaze and felt suddenly exposed.
“It isn't much.”
Ruth looked back at her. “It's your home.”
Patel stood near the door. “Take what you need. I'll give you some space.”
Sarah packed two pairs of jeans, three shirts, underwear, her charger, and the paperback she was halfway through. Then she stood in front of the closet, unable to decide whether she needed the blue sweater or the black one.
She understood that the choice did not matter. She also understood that if she could decide, she might start to feel like a person making decisions again.
Ruth said, “Both will fit.”
Sarah put both in the bag.
On the kitchen table lay her college application. She had circled the deadline in pencil and written questions in the margins. Could work evenings? Transfer credits? Ask about aid.
She folded it and put it between the pages of her book.
Then she saw the framed photograph on the windowsill: herself and Diana at the coast the previous summer, wind pushing their hair across their mouths.
For a moment she wanted to leave it.
Then she wrapped it in the black sweater.
Downstairs, Hank waited under the awning. He had a paper bag from the bakery in one hand.
“You need to eat,” he said.
“Did Ruth tell you that?”
“She threatened me.”
Ruth took the bag from him. “That makes it sound more exciting than it was.”
Toast yowled from the carrier.
Hank leaned down slightly. “You must be Toast.”
The cat answered with a noise like an insult.
“Good judge of character,” Sarah said.
Hank looked at her, then nodded gravely. “Seems fair.”
She nearly smiled, and resented him a little for making it possible.
They drove west in rain that thickened until the road looked rubbed out at the edges. Sarah sat beside Ruth with the carrier on her lap. Patel followed for part of the route, then pulled alongside at a light and signaled that another car would take over closer to the house. Sarah did not ask how it worked. For once, she was tired enough to let a practical answer remain practical.
The house stood on a quiet street behind a cedar hedge. It was small, painted pale yellow, with a porch light still burning though it was afternoon. Ruth showed Sarah the back door, the front lock, the phone, and the bedroom without once calling it a safe house.
That helped.
A person could sleep in a guest room. A safe house belonged to movies and people whose lives had stopped being their own.
Diana arrived an hour later with her suitcase and a plastic bag of groceries. She had bought the soup Sarah liked when she was sick.
Sarah saw the cans and looked away.