“Everything okay?” Michael asked as he held his hand out for me to take.

“Yeah,” I said. “I was just thinking about how crazy it is that my mom is still helping us—even now.”

Michael smiled at me as I took his hand and stepped out of the car.

“Maybe you got it wrong,” he said. “Her dying wish, I mean. Maybe she wasn’t trying to get you to save all of these other people in the world. Maybe she was trying to get you to save yourself.”

“What does that even mean?” I asked.

He wrapped his arm around me as we walked up toward the door to the cabin behind the other guys.

“It means that you seem to be finding more meaning and memory of your mother the further away we get from Charlotte, and the further away we get from the path you thought you were supposed to be on. Maybe your mother intended for you to leave all along.”

I thought about what he said for a moment. Maybe she did.

“It’s not much,” Frank said as we went inside his cabin. “But it’s mine.”

I looked around and saw that his place was a typical, messy bachelor pad with takeout food containers and empty beer cans on the kitchen table still. I supposed that for some people, just having a place of their own was the dream to aspire to. For me, it was freedom. Freedom from all the crap we left behind in Charlotte, freedom from all of the family drama and crooked legacies that had tormented me since childhood, and freedom to start my own life somewhere else, with someone else. I looked over at Michael, who was inspecting the living situation for the night and glancing down the hall (probably making sure that there weren’t cops getting ready to jump out at us). I just wanted to be with him and live in peace.

“So there’s a spare room down that hallway,” Frank said, looking a bit embarrassed by the slim accommodations. “Sorry that I don’t have more rooms.”

“One room is all we need,” Rob said.

Frank eyed him with a curious expression, but I knew that Rob had favored the single room this time for a different reason than he normally would. He wanted to make sure we were safe. And the best way to ensure that was by making sure we all stayed together.

“There’s food and drinks in the fridge,” Frank offered as he tried to tidy up some of the mess on the table. He definitely wasn’t expecting company, which again supported the idea that he wasn’t up to any sort of master plan or set-up. He was simply just trying to help.

“What do you think your friend will be able to do for us?” I asked as I sat down on the couch next to him.

Frank was already texting someone on his phone and I assumed that it was the border patrol friend that he had told us about.

“Well,” he said as he paused to read an incoming text. “He said that he can get you across. But that’s it. As soon as you’re on the other side of the border, you’re on your own.”

“That’s all we need,” Michael said as he came to join us.

The other two guys sat down near us too, both with fresh cans of beer in their hands.

“Hope it’s okay that we helped ourselves?” Adam asked as he motioned toward the can in his hand.

“Of course,” Frank nodded. “Like I said, you’re welcome to whatever I have.”

“We’ll get some sleep here tonight,” Michael said. “And then head out first thing in the morning if your friend will be ready for us?”

“Yep, he said he starts his shift at eight o’clock. The earlier you get there, the better. Things get backed up as the day goes on and they send more border patrol agents to keep up with the traffic. It would be smart for you to avoid as much of that as you can.”

“We’ll be ready in the morning,” Rob said.

I noticed that he didn’t have a beer in his hand. He still really didn’t trust Frank at all.

After a few more minutes of talking about what we would be doing in the morning and what to do if something happened to go wrong and we needed to get out of there, we all went to bed.

“Thank you.” I said to Frank one last time as I headed into the guest room to try and get some rest. “We appreciate how much you’re helping us, and how much you’re risking in order to do so.”

Frank smiled and gave me a gentle pat on the side of my shoulder.

“I can sleep well at night now knowing that I’ve repaid a great kindness. I’m glad to have had the chance to meet Paula’s daughter.”

When I crawled into bed, all three guys were around me. It honestly felt a bit strange to have Rob there again. I guess it was because he had been missing for a while. Or maybe because it just always felt strange not having Julian anymore. I felt Michael’s arms around me and tried to focus on the steady beating of his heart against my ear as I pressed my eyes closed to sleep. It was hard to sleep in a strange place at what felt like the edge of nowhere. It also felt strange to let my guard down, which I knew was a good thing because I shouldn’t anyway.

When I couldn’t sleep, I tried a trick that I used to use when I was a kid on many restless nights of hearing my drunken father come home and start screaming at my mother before he eventually disappeared from our lives (at least for a time). I replayed things in my head as if they were movies that I was watching behind my eyes. Sometimes, I chose which memories or events, or even made-up scenarios I would replay before I fell asleep. Other times, I just laid in bed and let the visions come to me on their own. Tonight was one of those nights—a night that I allowed whatever images that wanted to come, rise to the surface of my mind.

It was funny which memory chose to appear. Although I suppose that I shouldn’t have been too surprised by it, considering it was a memory that crept into my subconscious often. It played out as realistically as if I was still actually there on that blanket in the backyard, building puzzles with David and watching my mother peek around the corner every so often to make sure that he was behaving and not doing anything to scare me. I could even still hear my mother’s voice as if it was distant and muffled, but yet still real and present.

“Be nice, David,” she said. “And let Lisette have a turn.”

13

When I woke up in the morning, my mother’s voice was still echoing in my head—it’s Lisette’s turn.

“Come on, we have to go,” Michael said as he gently nudged me awake.

My eyes felt heavy and it looked like it was still dark outside.

“Why are we leaving now?” I asked. “I thought his friend didn’t start his shift until eight?”

“Apparently his friend texted and said that he’s going in early. Someone called out and he’s picking up some extra hours. Frank said it would be better to go now under a little cloak of darkness before the sun fully comes up.”

“None of this sits well with me,” Rob said. “Change of plans at the last minute sounds way too convenient.”

Michael looked at Rob and this time it seemed as though the two of them were on the same page. He looked a lot more uneasy about the whole thing than he had last night.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Adam said, noticing my visible anxiety and putting an arm around my shoulder. “Frank is right, before sunrise is better anyway.”

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Five o’clock.”

I had a nagging feeling that made me give a bit more thought to some of the concerns Rob had voiced.

“Ready?” Frank asked as we all piled out into his living room.

“Yeah,” Michael answered.

“You should leave behind anything that can be used to identify or track you. If you get caught at the border to phones, or credit cards, or passports, you’ll be immediately handed over to the cops.”

“I thought you said that your friend would be able to get us through,” Michael said with a furrowed brow. “We shouldn’t get caught if that’s the case.”