“Yes. I grew up there.” Why had she told her that? Now there would be questions, and she didn’t want to answer questions.

“You have family there?”

Denise? “No.” Her hands were hurting again and she released her grip on the wheel slightly. “No family.”

“So it will be just us?”

“Yes. Just us.” How was she going to handle that? She wasn’t going to be alone, was she? She had Ashley. Ashley, who couldn’t stop talking. Ashley, who had been in the car with Cliff. Ashley, who was a complication Joanna had yet to address.

Ashley, who was pregnant.

The sharp rip had become an ache in the center of her chest but it clearly wasn’t visible because Ashley kept talking.

“Is it in the middle of nowhere?”

“I wouldn’t describe it as nowhere. We don’t have immediate neighbors.” Joanna turned off the main highway and headed toward the coast.

The road curved alongside the ocean and through the darkness she could pick out the shadow of jagged rock, the flash of white as the waves rolled in and the spray as it erupted onto the shore.

She stopped in Santa Barbara just long enough to breathe in the salt air and stretch her tired limbs.

When she returned to the car she saw that Ashley was finally asleep, her head nestled deep in the pillow.

Relieved, Joanna reached into the back of the car and grabbed the blanket she’d packed. Careful not to wake her, she tucked it around the sleeping girl and then reached into her backpack and pulled out a flask. She poured herself a cup of the strong coffee she’d made earlier.

There was no one else around. In this moment it was just her, the darkness, the whip of the wind and the crash of the wild ocean.

The sound made her think of her father and it comforted her. Denise hadn’t been a swimmer. She’d complained about the salt in her hair and the sand on her skin. The sea had been the one place Joanna had her father to herself. It had been just the two of them, laughing, splashing.

She’d spent more time on the small beach below Otter’s Nest than she had in the house. She loved to swim, to feel the cold ocean close over her sun-warmed skin and stiffen her hair with salt. Even now, to plunge into the water was to plunge into happiness.

She stared at the water now, remembering.

Once, she’d had a life here. This had been her place, and then she’d tossed it to the wind and taken off without looking back. She’d been running away. And she was doing the same now, wasn’t she? Running from the press. Running from Cliff’s memory. Running from her life.

Was she ever going to live a life where she wasn’t running?