The Great Escape

Chapter Four

THE SMALL RENTAL HOUSE SAT on one of Caddo Lake’s hidden bayous. A pair of aging window air conditioners protruded from the faded mustard-colored siding, and a square of artificial turf covered the front stoop. They’d spent the previous night at a motel near Nacogdoches, where Panda had made a point of ignoring her. Early this morning, they’d headed northeast toward the lake, which sat on the Texas-Louisiana border and, according to the pamphlet she’d picked up when they stopped for gas, was the largest freshwater lake in the South-and surely the spookiest, with its primordial swamps rising out of brown water.

The house was shabby but clean, with a small living room, two even smaller bedrooms, and an old-fashioned kitchen. Lucy chose the room with twin beds. The orange plaid wallpaper curled at the seams and clashed with the cheap purple and green floral quilted bedspread, but she was too grateful to have a wall between her bed and Panda’s to care.

She changed into her shorts and made her way to the kitchen. It was outfitted with metal cabinets, worn countertops, and a gray vinyl floor. The window above the sink looked out over the bayou, and a nearby door led to a small wooden deck that held a molded plastic table, webbed lawn chairs, a propane grill, and some fishing gear.

She found Panda gazing out at the palmetto banking the bayou, his feet propped on the deck railing, a Coke can curled in his palm. At least he hadn’t hunkered down with another six-pack. He didn’t acknowledge her as she checked out the grill, then examined a fishing pole. His silences were unnerving. “It’s hot out here,” she finally said.

He took a swig of Coke without bothering to reply. She averted her eyes from the disagreeable T-shirt she’d been pretending all day not to notice. Panda’s concept of sartorial elegance didn’t extend further than a shower and a clean pair of jeans. She felt an unwelcome pang for Ted, the sweet, sensitive, even-tempered bridegroom she’d thrown under the bus.

“A shade umbrella would be nice,” she said.

Nothing but silence.

She spotted an excursion boat in the distance, cutting through bald cypress webbed with Spanish moss. “If I were a biker, I’d have a better name than Panda.”

Viper.

He crumpled his Coke can in his fist and stalked off the deck into the backyard, pitching the can into a black plastic trash bin on his way. As he walked toward the lake, she slumped into the chair he’d abandoned. Ted was a great conversationalist and the best listener she’d ever known. He’d acted as though he was fascinated with whatever she said. Of course, he acted that way with everybody, even crazy people, but still… She’d never known him to be impatient or short-tempered-never heard him utter a harsh word. He was kind, patient, thoughtful, understanding, and yet she’d dumped him. What did that say about her?

She pulled one of the matching chairs closer with her heels, feeling bluer by the minute. Panda reached the dock. An overturned canoe lay on the bank, and an osprey skimmed the water. He hadn’t told her how long he planned to rent the house, only that she was free to leave anytime, the sooner the better. But did he really want that? She was growing increasingly convinced that he was smarter than he let on, and she couldn’t let go of her nagging fear that he was talking to the tabloids. What if he’d figured out he could make a lot more than a thousand dollars selling them her story?

She headed down the steps and toward the water, where he’d stopped by the canoe. She scuffed the heel of her sneaker in the dirt. He didn’t look up. She wished she’d chosen a traveling companion who didn’t indulge in oppressive silences and favor loathsome bumper stickers. But then, she wished for a lot of things. That she’d picked a different fiancé to abandon, one who’d done something-anything-to justify being ditched at the altar. But Ted hadn’t, and some ugly part of her hated him for being so much better than she was.

She couldn’t stand her thoughts a moment longer. “I like to fish,” she said. “I throw everything back. Except when I went to Outward Bound. I kept the fish then because-”

“Not interested.” He straightened and gave her a long look-not undressing her with his eyes; he’d stopped doing that-but looking at her in a way that made her feel as if he were seeing every part of her, even the parts she didn’t know were there. “Call Ted and tell him you’re sorry. Call your folks. It’s been three days. You’ve had your adventure. It’s time for the rich girl to go home.”

“I’ve heard enough rich-girl cracks.”

“I call it like I see it.”

“Like you want to see it.”

He studied her for an uncomfortably long moment, then tilted his head toward the canoe. “Help me get this thing in the water.”

They flipped the canoe and slid it into the lake. She grabbed one of the paddles without waiting for an invitation and stepped in. She hoped he’d stalk off, but he picked up the other paddle and climbed in, the motion so graceful the canoe barely moved.

For the next hour, they glided through the water, steering clear of the water hyacinths that choked the swampier areas. As they paddled from one hidden bayou to the next, through eerie cypress forests draped with Spanish moss, he barely spoke. She glanced back at him. The play of his muscles stretched his white T-shirt over his chest as he paddled, highlighting the message written in black letters. The shirt wasn’t one of his recent purchases but something that must have been stashed in the bike’s saddlebags when he’d left Wynette. If only it had stayed there. “Those awful bumper stickers are bad enough,” she said, “but at least a person has to be close to your bike to see them.”

He watched an alligator lolling in a patch of sunlight on the far bank. “I told you about the bumper stickers.”

She turned around in her seat, resting the paddle on her knees and letting him steer. “You said the bike’s previous owner put them on. So why didn’t you let me peel them off?”

He shifted his paddle to the other side. “Because I like them.”

She frowned at the message on his T-shirt: IT ONLY SEEMS KINKY THE FIRST TIME.

“It was a gift,” he said.

“From Satan?”

Something that looked almost like a smile flickered across his face and then disappeared. “You don’t like it, you know what you can do about it.” He cleared another snarl of water hyacinths.

“What if a child saw that shirt?”

“Seen any kids today?” He shifted his weight slightly on the seat. “You’re making me sorry I lost my favorite one.”

She turned back to the bow. “I don’t want to hear.”

“It says, ‘I’m all for gay marriage as long as both bitches are hot.’”

Her temper sparked, and the canoe wobbled as she twisted back around. “Political correctness is obviously a big joke to you, but it isn’t to me. Call me old-fashioned, but I think there’s value in honoring the dignity of everyone.”

He pulled his paddle out of the murky water. “Damn, I wish I’d brought the one I got a coupla weeks ago.”

“A terrible loss, I’m sure.”

“Want to know what it said?”

“No.”

“It said…”-he leaned toward her and spoke in a slow whisper that carried over the water-“‘If I’d shot you when I wanted to, I’d be out by now.’”

So much for conversation.

When they returned to the house, she made herself a sandwich from the groceries they’d picked up, claimed an old paperback someone had left behind, and closed herself in the bedroom. Loneliness wrapped around her like a too-heavy overcoat. Had Ted done anything to find her? Apparently not, considering that he hadn’t tried to stop her from leaving the church. And what about her parents? She’d called Meg twice from Panda’s phone, so it couldn’t be that hard for the Secret Service to locate her.

What if Mat and Nealy had written her off? She told herself they wouldn’t do that.

Unless they were so disgusted with her that they didn’t want to see her for a while.

She couldn’t blame them.

SOMETHING ODD HAPPENED OVER THE next few days. Panda’s manners underwent a marked improvement. At first she didn’t notice the absence of all those belches, slurps, and scratching. It was only when she saw him cut a piece of chicken neatly from the bone and carefully swallow his first bite before he asked her to pass the pepper that she became thoroughly confused. What had happened to that open-mouth chewing and using the back of his hand as a napkin? As for any suggestions of sexual violence… He barely seemed to notice she was female.

They went into the town of Marshall for groceries and supplies. She bought sunglasses, kept her hat pulled low, the baby bump she’d grown to detest in place, and with Panda close by, no one noticed her.

He worked on his bike, taking things apart, reassembling. Bare chested, and with a blue bandanna wrapped around his forehead, he lubed and polished, checked fluid levels and changed brake pads. He set a radio in an open window and listened to hip-hop, except once she’d gone outside and heard an aria from The Magic Flute. When she’d commented on it, he accused her of messing around with his radio and ordered her to change the damn station. Occasionally she’d catch him talking to someone on his cell, but he never left his phone around, so she had no opportunity to check his call records.

At night, she sealed herself in her bedroom while he sat up, sometimes watching a baseball game on television, but more frequently sitting on the deck, staring out at the water. The numbness from the first few days began to fade, and she found herself watching him.

PANDA DRAGGED THE MUSKY SCENT of the bayou into his lungs. He had too much time to think-too many memories crowding in-and each day his resentment burrowed deeper.

He hadn’t expected her to last more than a few hours, yet here she still was, seven days after he’d picked her up. Why couldn’t she do what she was supposed to? Go back to Wynette or run home to Virginia. He didn’t give a damn where she went, as long as she was gone.

He couldn’t understand her. She’d seen right through that stomach-churning bogus rape he’d staged their second night out, and she acted as if she didn’t hear half the insults he hurled at her. She was so controlled, so disciplined. What she’d done on her wedding day was clearly out of character. And yet… Beneath those good manners, he kept catching glimpses of something-someone-more complicated. She was smart, maddeningly perceptive, and stubborn as hell. Shadows didn’t cling to her like they did to him. He’d bet anything she’d never woken up screaming. Or drunk until she blacked out. And when she’d been a kid…

When she’d been a kid, she’d been able to do what he couldn’t.

Five hundred dollars. That’s all his kid brother had been worth.

Through the cry of a swamp creature, he heard his eight-year-old brother’s voice as they’d walked up the broken sidewalk to still another foster home, their current social worker climbing the creaking porch steps in front of them. “What if I pee the bed again?” Curtis whispered. “That’s what got us kicked out of the last house.”

Panda hid his own fear beneath a fifteen-year-old’s swagger. “Don’t worry about it, jerkface.” He delivered a sucker punch to Curtis’s scrawny arm. “I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and take you to the bathroom.”

But what if he didn’t wake up like he hadn’t last week? He’d promised himself he wouldn’t fall asleep until he got Curtis up to pee, but he’d dozed off anyway, and the next day old lady Gilbert had told Social Services they had to find someplace else for Curtis.

Panda wouldn’t let anything separate him from his kid brother, and he told their social worker he’d run away if the two of them got split up. She must have believed him because she found a new house for them. But she warned him there weren’t any more families willing to take them both.

“I’m scared,” Curtis whispered as they reached the porch. “Are you scared?”

“I’m never scared,” he lied. “Nothing to be scared of.”

He’d been so wrong.

Panda gazed out at the dark water. Lucy had been fourteen when her mother had died. If he and Curtis had fallen in with Mat and Nealy Jorik, his brother would still be alive. Lucy had accomplished what he couldn’t pull off-she’d kept her sister safe-and now Curtis lay in a grave while the sister Lucy had protected prepared for her first year of college.

Curtis had hooked up with a gang when he was only ten, something Panda could have prevented if he hadn’t been in juvie. They’d let him out long enough to go to his little brother’s funeral.

He blinked his eyes hard. Memories of Curtis only led to other memories. It would be easier not to think if he had music to distract him, but he couldn’t listen to the heavy drama of Otello, Boris Godunov, or a dozen other operas with Lucy around. With anybody around.

He wished she’d come out and talk to him. He wanted her close; he wanted her farther away. He wanted her to leave, to stay, to take off her clothes-he couldn’t help that. Being with her all day would test any man, especially a horny bastard like himself.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose, pulled his cell from his pocket, and carried it around to the side of the house where he couldn’t be overheard.

PANDA KEPT GOADING HER INTO going for morning runs, and even though she held him back, he refused to run ahead. “The second I’m out of sight, you’ll start walking,” he said.

True. She walked for exercise and had a gym membership she used semi-semi-regularly, but she wasn’t a running enthusiast. “When did you make yourself my personal trainer?”

He punished her by kicking up the pace. Eventually, however, he took pity and slowed.

Her conviction that he wasn’t entirely the Neanderthal he wanted her to believe had grown along with her curiosity about him, and she embarked on a fishing expedition. “Have you talked to your girlfriend since you’ve been gone from wherever you’re gone from?”

A grunt.

“Where is that, by the way?”

“Up north.”

“Colorado? Nome?”

“Do you have to talk?”

“Married? Divorced?”

“Watch that pothole. If you break your leg, you’re on your own.”

She pulled some extra air into her burning lungs. “You know the details of my life. It’s only fair that I know some of yours.”

He moved ahead again. Unlike her, he wasn’t out of breath. “Never been married, and that’s all you’re getting.”

“Are you involved with anybody?”

He looked at her over his shoulder-faintly pitying. “What do you think?”

“That the pool of lady alligator wrestlers isn’t big enough to give you a lot of dating opportunities?”

She heard a sound-either amusement or a warning that he’d heard enough stupid questions-but all she’d learned was that he was single, and he could be lying about that. “It’s so strange,” she said. “As soon as we got here, your manners improved. It must be the swamp air.”

He cut to the other side of the road. “The question is,” she said, “why bother with all that spitting and scratching since-and I have to admit I was surprised about this-it doesn’t seem to come naturally?”

She expected him to dodge the question, but he didn’t. “So what? I got bored when I realized you were too much of a nut job to be scared into doing what you should have done right away?”

No one had ever called her a nut job, but since the insult came from him, she didn’t take it to heart. “You were hoping when I saw the contrast between you and Ted, I’d realize what I’d given up and go back to Wynette.”

“Something like that. Ted’s a good guy, and he was obviously in love with you. I was trying to do him a favor. I stopped when I realized the biggest favor I could do him was to keep you from going back.”

That was true enough to hurt, and they finished the run in silence.

When they returned to the house, he pulled his sweat-soaked T-shirt over his head, grabbed the hose, and doused himself. His hair clung to his neck in wet black ribbons; the sun poured over his face as he tilted his head to the sky.

He finally set the hose aside and used his palm to sluice the water from his chest. His swarthy skin, blunt-tipped nose, and wet, big-fisted hands made an unsettling contrast to Ted’s perfect male beauty. Panda might not be as crude as he wanted her to believe, but he still existed completely outside her realm of experience.

She realized she was staring and turned away. Her female body was clearly drawn to what she saw. Fortunately, her female brain wasn’t nearly as foolish.

ONE DAY DRIFTED INTO ANOTHER until they’d been at the lake for a week. She swam, read, or baked bread, one of the few foods that tasted good to her. What she didn’t do was call Ted or her family.

Each morning after their run, Panda appeared in the kitchen, his hair still wet from his shower, his curls temporarily tamed, although she knew they’d quickly reassert themselves. He picked up what she suspected would be the first of several warm slices of the oatmeal bread she’d just taken from the oven, tore the bread neatly in half, and spread each piece with a spoonful of orange marmalade. “Did Ted know about your baking skills when he let you dump him?” he said after he’d swallowed his second bite.

She set aside her own piece of bread, no longer hungry. “Ted doesn’t eat a lot of carbs.” That wasn’t true, but she wouldn’t admit that she’d never gotten around to baking for her fiancé.

She’d picked up her adult cooking skills under the funnel-shaped stainless steel lights that hung in the White House kitchen, the place where she’d escaped when her siblings’ squabbles had gotten on her nerves. There, she’d learned from some of the country’s best chefs, and now Panda, instead of Ted, was the beneficiary.

He twisted the lid back on the marmalade jar. “Ted’s the kind of guy who was born under a lucky star. Brains, money, polish.” He slapped the jar in the refrigerator and shoved the door closed. “While the rest of the world screws up, Ted Beaudine sails free.”

“Yes, well, he was trapped in a pretty big screwup last weekend,” she said.

“He’s already over it.”

She prayed that was true.

NEAR THE HOUSE, CADDO LAKE was shallow with a muddy bottom, so she couldn’t swim there, but when they were on the lake, she swam off the small outboard that came with the rental house. He never went in the water with her, and eight days after their arrival-eleven days since she’d fled-she asked him about it as she swam alongside the drifting boat. “Odd that a tough guy like you seems afraid to go in the water.”

“Can’t swim,” he said as he propped his bare feet on the boat’s splintering rail. “I never learned.”

Having observed his love of being on the water, she found that strange. And what about those jeans he always wore? She flipped to her back and took another approach. “You don’t want me to see your skinny legs. You’re afraid I’ll mock.” As if any part of his body could be less than muscular…

“I like jeans,” he said.

She dropped her feet and treaded water. “I don’t get it. It’s a sauna around here, and you’ll take off your shirt at the drop of a hat, so why not wear shorts?”

“I’ve got some scars. Now shut up about it.”

He might be telling the truth, but she doubted it. As he leaned back against the stern, sunlight gilded his swarthy pirate’s skin, and his half-closed eyes seemed more languid than menacing. She felt another of those unwelcoming stirs of… something. She wanted to think it was merely awareness, but it was more than that. An involuntary arousal.

So what? It had been almost four months since she and Ted had made love, and she was only human. Since she had no intention of giving in to her wayward thoughts, what was the harm? Still, she wanted to punish him for making her mind wander where it shouldn’t. “It’s strange that you don’t have any tattoos.” She dog-paddled next to the stern. “No naked women dancing on your biceps, no obscenities etched on your knuckles. Not even a tasteful iron cross. Aren’t you worried you’ll get kicked out of the biker club?”

The flickering light coming off the water softened the hard edges of his cheekbones. “I hate needles.”

“You don’t swim. You hate needles. You’re afraid to show your legs. You really are sort of a mess, aren’t you?”

“You’re not exactly the person to call anybody else a mess.”

“True. Deepest apologies.” She managed something almost approaching one of his sneers.

“When are you going to call your folks?” he said out of nowhere.

She went under and didn’t come up until she had to. “Meg lets them know I’m safe,” she said, even though she knew that wasn’t the same as talking to them herself.

She missed Charlotte and Holly’s spats, Tracy’s dramas, Andre’s rambling accounts of the latest fantasy novel he’d read. She missed Nealy and Mat, but the idea of picking up the phone and calling them paralyzed her. What could she possibly say?

Panda gave her a none-too-gentle assist back into the boat. Her cheap one-piece black swimsuit rode up, but he didn’t seem to notice. He fired up the outboard, and they chugged back to the dock. As he killed the engine, she gathered up her flip-flops, but before she could climb out of the boat, he said, “I have to get back to work. We’re leaving tomorrow.”

She’d known this limbo couldn’t last forever, but she still hadn’t made plans to move ahead. Couldn’t make them. She was paralyzed, caught between the focused, organized person she’d been and the aimless, confused woman she’d become. The panic that was never far away kicked up inside her. “I’m not ready.”

“That’s your problem.” He tethered the boat. “I’m dropping you off at the Shreveport airport on my way.”

She swallowed. “No need. I’m staying here.”

“What are you going to do for money?”

She should have solved that problem by now, but she hadn’t. Although she wouldn’t admit it, she didn’t like the idea of staying at the house without him. For a brooding and increasingly mysterious stranger, he was surprisingly relaxing to be around. So much more relaxing than being with Ted. With Panda, she didn’t have to pretend to be a better person than she was.

He stepped out of the boat. “Tell you what. If you call your family tonight, you can ride with me for a while longer.”

She scrambled onto the dock. “For how long?”

“Until you piss me off,” he said as he tied up the boat.

“That might not get me to the next town.”

“My best offer. Work with it.”

She was almost glad he was forcing her to do what she should have done from the beginning, and she nodded.

That night she did her best to put off the phone call with various unnecessary chores until he lost patience. “Call them.”

“Later,” she said. “I have to pack first.”

He sneered. “Chickenshit.”

“What do you care? This doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

“Sure it does. Your mother was the president. It’s my patriotic duty.”

She snatched the phone. As she punched in the number, she wished she’d been able to get her hands on his phone just once when he wasn’t watching. Even as she retreated to the deck, he could see her through the window.

Her heart hammered when she heard Mat’s familiar gruff voice. She fought back tears. “Dad…”

“Lucy! Are you all right?”

“Kind of.” Her voice broke. “I’m sorry. You know I wouldn’t hurt you and Mom for anything.”

“We know that. Lucy, we love you. Nothing could change that.”

His words twisted the knife of guilt even deeper. They’d given her everything without expecting anything back, and this was how she repaid them. She struggled against tears. “I love you, too.”

“We need to sit down together and discuss what happened. Figure out why you didn’t feel like you could talk to us about it. I want you to come home.”

“I know. How-how are the kids?”

“Holly’s having a sleepover, and Charlotte’s learning to play the guitar. Andre has a girlfriend, and Tracy’s really pissed with you. As for your grandfather… You can imagine how he’s taken this. I suggest a stiff drink before you call him. But first you have to talk to your mother. You might be thirty-one, but you’re still part of this family.”

He couldn’t have said anything that made her feel worse about herself.

“Lucy?” It was Nealy. He’d passed over the phone.

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “Really.”

“Never mind about that,” her mother said briskly. “I don’t care if you’re a grown woman. We want you home.”

“I-I can’t.” She bit her lip. “I’m not done running away yet.”

Nealy, of all people, couldn’t argue with that, and she didn’t try. “When do you think you’ll be done?”

“I’m… not sure.”

“Let me talk to her!” Tracy shrieked in the background.

Nealy said, “We had no idea you were so unhappy.”

“I wasn’t. You can’t think that. It’s just-I can’t explain.”

“I wish you’d try.”

“Let me have the phone!” Tracy cried.

“Promise you’ll stay in touch,” her mother said. “And promise you’ll call your grandfather.”

Before Lucy could promise anything, Tracy grabbed the phone. “Why haven’t you called me? This is all Meg’s fault. I hate her. You should never have listened to what she said. She’s jealous because you were getting married and she wasn’t.”

“Trace, I know I disappointed you, but this isn’t Meg’s fault.”

Her baby sister Button had turned into a volcano of eighteen-year-old outrage. “How can you love somebody one minute and then not love them the next?”

“It wasn’t exactly like that.”

“You’re being selfish. And stupid.”

“I’m sorry I hurt you.” Before she lost her courage, she needed to get the rest of this over with. “Put the others on, will you?”

In the next ten minutes, she learned that Andre still talked on the phone to Ted, that Holly was auditioning for a part in a play, and that Charlotte had mastered “Drunken Sailor” on the guitar. Each conversation was more painful than the last. Only after she’d hung up did it register that all three of them had posed the question her parents had never raised.

“Lucy, where are you?”

Panda came up behind her on the deck and took the phone before she could check his call log. Was he in touch with the tabloids or not? He disappeared back inside, and when she finally went in herself, he was watching a baseball game. “I need to make another call,” she said.

He studied her. “Phone’s been acting up lately. Give me the number and I’ll put it in for you.”

“I can handle it.”

“It’s temperamental.”

She had to stop playing games. “I want to see your phone.”

“I know.”

“If you don’t have anything to hide, you’ll let me look at it.”

“Who says I don’t have anything to hide?”

He was enjoying himself, and she didn’t like it. “You know everything about me, but I don’t know any more about you than I did eleven days ago. I don’t even know your real name.”

“Simpson. Bart.”

“Afraid I’ll see the National Enquirer on your speed dial?”

“You won’t.”

“One of the other tabloids, then? Or did you contact the legitimate press?”

“Do you really think somebody like me is going to cozy up to the press?”

“Maybe. I’m a lucrative meal ticket.”

He shrugged, extended his leg, and pulled his phone from his pocket. “Knock yourself out.”

The fact that he was giving up the phone told her she wouldn’t discover any secrets, and she was right. The only call on his log was the one she’d just made. She flipped the phone back to him.

As she walked away, his voice drifted toward her, quiet and a little gruff. “I see you as a lot of things, but a meal ticket isn’t one of them.”

She didn’t know what he meant by that, so she pretended not to hear.

PANDA ABANDONED THE BASEBALL GAME he hadn’t been watching and moved back out to the deck. It was time to have a serious talk with himself. As if he hadn’t been doing that for almost two weeks.

Be the best at what you’re good at. That had always been his motto. Be the best at what you’re good at and stay away from what you’re not. At the top of that list? Emotional crap.

But being closed up with her like this would drive any man nuts. Those shorts and T-shirts made her look like a damned fifteen-year-old, which should have turned his stomach but didn’t because she wasn’t fifteen.

He was trapped with his arousal, his resentment, his fear. He gazed out into the night, trying not to give into them. Failing.

LUCY STUDIED THE CURLING WALLPAPER in her bedroom. They were leaving here tomorrow morning, and Panda was as much a mystery to her as he’d been when she’d climbed on his bike. She didn’t even know his real name. Most important, she didn’t know whether or not he was selling her out.

She’d eaten barely any dinner, and she went into the kitchen to fix herself a bowl of cereal. Through the window, she saw Panda on the deck, where he was staring at the lake again. She wondered what he was thinking about.

She sprinkled some Special K in a bowl and carried it into the living room. The American President was playing silently on the television. As she started to sit, she spotted what appeared to be a business card wedged at the back of the seat cushion. She slid it out.

CHARITY ISLAND FERRY

RESIDENT PASS

# 3583

Your Pure Michigan Adventure Begins Here

Had this fallen out of Panda’s wallet or had a previous tenant lost it? Only one way to find out. She returned the card to the seat cushion, leaving it just as she’d found it.

The next morning it was gone.