Chapter 1

Sometimes the truth didn't matter to me. All I wanted was to be done with everything that had anything to do with him.

When I was three months pregnant, Charles Rivers told me to take the fall for Vanessa Stone.

The confession lay on the table in front of me, black ink on white paper.

It felt like a cold headstone pressing down on my chest.

Charles sat across from me with his knuckles resting on the edge of the table.

I stared at his long, clean fingers until my eyes lost focus.

Charles said, "Emily, Vanessa isn't well.

"She wouldn't survive prison. You're pregnant, and the lawyer says you have a shot at house arrest. It won't be that hard on you."

I looked down at my belly and touched the little life growing inside me.

"And if I say no?" I asked.

Charles looked up at me for one second, then looked away.

I understood. This wasn't a discussion. It was a notice.

I clenched my fists until my nails bit into my palms, and the pain cleared my head.

"After I take the fall for her, are we square?"

"Yes."

He had settled on that answer long before then.

I stared into his eyes.

"Do you swear?"

Charles' brow twitched with a rare flicker of impatience.

After a few seconds, he said, "I swear."

I picked up the pen and signed my name carefully.

Before I went to prison, I had an abortion at the hospital.

When Charles found out, he lost control in front of me for the first time.

In the visiting room, he stared at me through the glass, his palm flat on the counter, the veins standing out on the back of his hand.

"Emily Shaw, what gave you the right to get rid of my child?"

I watched the red creep up into his eyes.

It struck me as funny all of a sudden. So he could feel pain too.

Only it was never me he hurt for.

"I won't let my child grow up with a mother behind bars or with a father who put her there."

I hung up the phone and stood to leave before he could say whatever he wanted to say.

I said, "Charles, as of today we're square."

*****

No one came for me on the day I walked out of prison, and I hadn't expected anyone to.

The guard handed me a plastic bag with two old shirts inside it, my state ID, and a phone that had been switched off for a long time.

The guard asked, "Anyone from your family coming?"

I said, "No."

"Friends?"

I thought about it, and a few faces flickered through my mind and went dark again. "No one."

The guard's hand paused, and then he pushed the bag into my arms. "Make a good life out there."

I smiled, "I will."

The truth was that I had no idea how.

My bank account was empty, my phone service was cut off, and all I had left was the old house my mom left behind.

I stood at the prison gate and looked down the gray road running off into the distance. I had checked before I went in, and it was two hours and forty-three minutes on foot from there to my door.

That wasn't long, and it was shorter than a year and eight months.

I walked streets that felt familiar and strange at the same time, and the city hadn't waited for me.

A new mall had gone up, the old oak was cut down, and the road that always jammed had been turned into an overpass.

Cars rolled by overhead, and the wind scraped at my eardrums like a dull blade, over and over.

The light turned red and I stopped, and a young mom pulled up beside me with a stroller.

The baby inside was sound asleep, tiny hands curled, lips pursing now and then as if he were nursing in a dream.

If things had gone differently, I would have had one too.

The young mom must have noticed how long I had been looking, because she smiled at me, and I pulled my eyes away, caught out and unsure what to do with myself.

Thankfully the light turned green, and I hurried forward with the crowd.

It was fully dark by the time I got home, and my mom's memorial photo was sitting on the living room table.

I wiped the dust off it, bit by bit, with my sleeve.

"Mom," I whispered. "I'm home."

I was used to the silence that came after.

My phone screen lit up with dozens of old messages piled on top of each other.

There were overdue bills, court notices, unknown numbers, and one message saying my delivery app account had been approved.

[New user bonus: seven dollars on your first order.]

I stared at that line. This city hadn't left me a single friend, but it had left me one way to stay alive.

My job search went smoother than I expected, all the way to failure.

The HR woman at the first company read my resume and stopped at the last line. "You have a record?"

I said, "Yes."

"Hit-and-run?"

"That's right."

She slid my resume back without really looking at me. "Sorry, you're not a fit for this role. We'll reach out if something changes."

The second company didn't even offer me a chair, and the third one dug deeper.

The interviewer asked, "You don't have a driver's license?"

I nodded, and he looked at me the way a person looked at a joke that didn't hold together. "No license, but a hit-and-run?"

I said, "That's what the judgment says."

He said nothing, and neither did I, and the silence got uncomfortable.

Finally he capped his pen. "We'll think about it."

By the time I walked out of the office building, the skin on my heels had rubbed raw.