Before He Finds Her Read Online Free Page B

a little straighter. “Okay.”
    She couldn’t just say it, could she, with no preamble? Melanie placed a hand on Phillip’s knee and forced herself to look him in the eyes. “You’re a really...” and to her horror, the word that sprang to mind came straight out of a Hardy Boys novel. Swell.
    Swell?
    She couldn’t say that, of course, so she tried harder. “...a really great guy. What I mean is, I care about you.”
    He pulled his gaze away and bit his lip. He looked absolutely distressed. “You’re breaking up with me.”
    “What?”
    “That’s what you’re doing.”
    “It is?”
    He looked at her again. “It isn’t?”
    Somewhere, Raquel was shaking her head in disgust . “Why would I break up with you?”
    “ I don’t know,” he said. “Listen, Melanie, are you or aren’t you breaking up with me?”
    “I’m not breaking up with you.”
    His body visibly relaxed. “Good. I’m really glad.”
    To launder time without arousing suspicion, you had to choose small increments. But this was going nowhere, and soon her aunt would come home from work, find her missing, and freak out. So okay, forget Raquel and her comforting chatter.
    “When I was two and a half,” Melanie blurted out, “my father killed my mother and would’ve killed me, too, but I got away but so did he.”
    For several seconds, the only sound was the pulsing of the ceiling fan. Phillip watched her face, as if gauging how to react.
    “Is this a joke?” he finally said, but with gentleness in his voice. He knew it wasn’t. She’d been secretive with him from the start, evasive to the point of bizarre. Why he’d put up with her this long, she had no idea.
    “I’ve never told anyone before,” she said, looking down at her lap.
    He took her hand. “Oh, Melanie,” he said. “Oh, dear God.”
    This wasn’t the secret she’d come here to tell. But Phillip needed to know that the woman carrying his baby was putting them all at risk. And when he led her toward the bedroom, saying, “Let’s cool down,” she said yes. She had already laundered enough time this afternoon, and, especially after the morning’s disagreement with her aunt and uncle, she knew she ought to be getting home. But looking at Phillip looking at her, she realized that she was sick and tired of laundering time, and that she was desperate, instead, to spend it.
    When they went into his bedroom and he said, “Do you think you can tell me more? Can you tell me everything?” she said yes again. And when he said, “You know you can trust me, don’t you?” she willed herself to say yes one more time—the brief hesitation not a matter of distrust but rather disbelief.
    This is real , she told herself. This is happening. I am doing this. I am not alone.

3
    September 19, 1991
    Ramsey Miller had been awake for thirty-two hours when he stopped his truck for the hitchhiker.
    Usually he preferred solitude. Maybe some local FM station (music, never talk radio—the beauty was in getting away from talk); maybe just the engine’s hum and his own thoughts, while the forests and fields and mountains slid past. Not that he objected in principle to helping a stranger move from Point A to Point B. But strangers always felt the need to talk—about nothing or, worse, about something . Life lessons, road wisdom... whatever foolishness they were urgent for you to hear. As if they were doing you the favor. And when they weren’t trying to impress you, they were stinking up the upholstery with cigarette ash or worse. After the first year of driving his big rig, Ramsey swore off hitchhikers entirely.
    In the six years since, he’d made only two exceptions. First one hardly counted: no older than thirteen or fourteen, walking along the narrow shoulder of the eastbound side of I-80 at sunrise, middle of nowhere, PA, thumb in the air while sheets of rain pummeled her. From fifty yards off, she could’ve been a kid. Wasn’t till she was in the cab and shivering that Ramsey