Page 19 of In Her Memory

“Is that necessary? It’s just a bike.”

Ed looked up, his eyes narrowing slightly. “State law. No ID, no sale.” Emma swallowed hard.

“I don’t have any,” she said, trying to sound more confident than she felt. “But I’ll take twenty if you don’t ask questions.”

Ed grunted, considering. “You do look like you need it,” he said at last, putting two ten-dollar bills on the counter. Emma took them, relieved but uneasy, as if she’d just announced her location to whoever might be searching for her.

“Where you staying in Clarksboro?” Ed asked.

“Just passing through,” Emma replied.

“Hmm.” Ed handed her the money. “Not much passing through to be done in Clarksboro. Dead end kind of place.”

Emma pocketed the money. “Thanks for the warning,” she said as she hurried out the door. She stood on the sidewalk, suddenly aware of how vulnerable she felt without the bicycle. It was her means of escaping those she could still feel searching for her. The phantoms, as Loyalynne called them. She couldn’t outrun anything now.

“We have to keep moving,” Loyalynne said.

Emma shook her head. “Not until I get some food.”

She walked to a gas station across the street from the pawn shop, warm air thick with exhaust and stale coffee. She counted her money at the door, eyes darting to the parking lot. Nobody seemed to be looking for her here.

She grabbed an apple, a bottle of water, and a package of cheese crackers. The cashier—a woman who couldn’t have been much older than Emma—rang the items up without speaking and dropped them into a thin plastic bag. Emma handed her one of the ten-dollar bills, and when she got her change, she looked at the coins in her hand like they were bits of extra, unwanted weight.

She ate the apple in a few bites and drank half the water before she even made it back to the sidewalk. Her head felt clearer, but her legs were leaden. Loyalynne hovered beside her, impatient and unyielding. “It’s not safe here,” she said. “We’re too exposed.”

Emma ignored her, opening the crackers. “I’m not going without money again.”

“We don’t need it if we keep moving.”

“You don’t need it,” Emma snapped, chewing as she walked. Loyalynne’s expression—fixed and hollow—didn’t change. Emma stuffed the rest of the crackers into her pocket, took one more swig of water, and crumpled the plastic bag in her fist. “I’m not going hungry,” she said. “And I’m not leaving until I have enough to get far away from here.”

Loyalynne floated closer, irritation in her glassy eyes. “And how do you intend to do that?”

Emma didn’t answer. She looked down the block, at the rows of modest homes that lined the street, and started walking.

“If you really have to get more money,” Loyalynne said, beginning to sound a little panicky. “Stand at the corner. Look pitiful. People will give.”

Emma stiffened, her hands clenching into fists. “No.”

Loyalynne’s glass eyes seemed to flash. “What did you say?”

“I said no. I’m not begging.” Emma’s voice was firm. “I’ll find work.”

“Don’t be foolish. You need to be ready to move at any moment. A job ties you down.”

“I’m not talking about a regular job.” Emma started walking down the sidewalk, away from the pawn shop. “Just a day’s work. Yard work, housecleaning. Something that pays cash.”

Emma knew that she had done this sort of thing sometimes before, worked various jobs to survive wherever she wandered. She could do it again.

She could feel Loyalynne’s displeasure as the doll hovered just at the edge of her vision, silent but watchful. Emma knew she was pushing some kind of boundaries. But the voice she’d heard on the highway had shaken her—not because it frightened her, but because in spite of her denial, for a brief moment it had felt like home.

And it hadn’t called her Emma. For a moment she wondered why not. Why had that warm voice called her Piper?

Shaking off her questions, Emma walked through residential streets, studying the houses. She was looking for signs of neglect that might indicate a need for help—overgrown lawns, cluttered porches, peeling paint. Several blocks in, she spotted a modest ranch-style house with a yard full of fallen leaves.

“Here,” she said, turning up the walkway. “Someone needs to clear these leaves.”

“This is a waste of time,” Loyalynne muttered.