TJ crashed down into the king-size bed, back under the swirl of white blankets and soft white pillows where she’d slept hard, and pulled a sheet over her head. She wished she could stay there forever, not go outside and have everyone look to her for what they were going to do next. How the hell did she know what they needed to do or where they should go?

She wished she still had her phone to see what was going on back home but knew Ladarius had been right. They needed to dump everything before they crossed into Arkansas or the law would know where to find them. Right now, every string connecting them back to Tibbehah had been cut.

She felt like she’d been running a long time before this road trip, going back to the first she could remember, about the time her daddy died, and being passed around from house to house until her momma came back and took over, acting like she’d gotten straight and grown up. But that was all a lie. Everything that woman said was a lie. Gina Byrd had never been a good mother or someone TJ or John Wesley could depend on. If TJ hadn’t learned to take care of her own damn self, she wouldn’t have made it. But a kid could learn how to drink spoiled milk or walk two miles to the scratch and dent with a sock full of change for a can of Vienna sausages and saltines. A shoeless kid could wait outside her trailer in the deep winter cold because her mom had brought home a nice new man and all the moaning and knocking kept her awake at night. A kid could do about anything, including when Gina got pregnant again, another new nice man wanting to be part of the Byrd Family Shitshow for a while.