She got off in Colorado Springs and rented a motel room. She stayed long enough to buy a handgun and ammunition, and one morning just after sunrise, she shouldered her hiking gear and left the motel heading east.

She hiked along highways, sidestepping cities for the more rural areas, and the weeks went by until she finally reached Springer Mountain, Georgia—the beginning of the Appalachian Trail. It was at once a place she recognized for what it was, and one in which she felt comfortable.

She knew how to forage, and how to fish from the rivers and streams teeming with fish. But the trail went north from there, and it was getting too close to winter to hike north, so she started hiking south. She made it all the way to a little out of the way place called Blessings, Georgia before something about it spoke to her, and here is where she stopped. And now here she was, in something of a holding pattern. Not really participating in life. Just hiding from it.

* * *

Cathy set aside the memories, finished her morning coffee, and got ready to go for her morning run.

It was mid-November, but it promised to be a nice day in the high fifties. She was wearing her running shoes, sweatpants, and a long-sleeved T-shirt, so she pocketed her phone and left the house, pausing beneath the porch light to scan the area for signs of things that didn’t belong.

The streetlights were already fading with the growing light of a new day. The morning was still, the sky cloudless. She walked to the edge of the porch and waited for the car coming up the street to pass, and then waved when she recognized the boy who delivered the morning papers. He saw her and waved back. She still didn’t know his name, but this town was friendly like that.

She came off the porch, pausing in the driveway to stretch a few times, and then took off down the sidewalk at a jog, relishing the impact of foot to surface. The rhythm of her stride soon caught up with the thump of her heartbeat, and by the time she was making her second pass by the City Park, she’d been running for an hour.

The fat raccoon scurrying through the green space was heading for the trees, and the creek that ran through the park.

On the other side of the street, a young woman came running out of her house toward the old car parked in the drive. Cathy recognized her as one of the waitresses from Granny’s Country Kitchen. From the way she was moving, she was likely late for work.

The thought of Granny’s led Cathy to wanting some of the gravy and biscuits she’d had there before, but she couldn’t go there all hot and sweaty, and was wishing she’d pulled her hair up in a ponytail before leaving the house. Even though the morning was cool, the weight of the curls was hot against the back of her neck. She turned toward Main Street as she reached the end of the block, thinking to make one last sweep through Blessings, and then home.