Night Road - Kristin Hannah [113]
She picked up the envelope. Below it, stuck to the cushion, was a pink Post-it note.
Lexi—She’s in kindergarten. Morning class.
F.Y.I.
S
She opened the manila folder and found a single photograph. There, smiling up at her, was an elfin blond-haired girl in a pink blouse.
Her daughter.
* * *
Man plans. God laughs.
Lexi understood that sentence for the first time.
She had planned her release from prison down to the smallest detail. She’d talked about her plans in Group and told Tamica everything. She had intended to go to Florida and move in with Eva and Barbara and start looking for a job. She’d even dreamed of graduate school. She would make a good social worker; maybe she could help girls in trouble. It hadn’t occurred to her that once she left the razor wire behind, she would be back in a world where unexpected things happened.
Who would have thought she’d end up here, on Pine Island? The only place in the world she didn’t want to be.
She made up the sofa bed and then crawled between the softest sheets she’d ever felt. Pale light from an outside street lamp fell through the window, lighting the dark room. She closed her eyes and tried to will herself to sleep, but it was so quiet, and she could have sworn that the picture of Grace was breathing.
For years, she’d ruthlessly suppressed all thoughts of her daughter. She walked away when Tamica mentioned Grace and turned away when the TV screen showed images of little girls running into their mothers’ arms. She’d told herself that Grace deserved the kind of life Lexi could never offer.
But now, in the dark, with the photograph beside her, she felt that resolve weaken.
She slept fitfully, dreaming dreams that were best forgotten. Finally, at six o’clock, she threw the covers back. Padding barefooted to the bathroom, she was surprised to find a shower. She took her first private shower in years and dried off with a soft white towel.
Her reflection afterward showed a face that was pointed and thin, like a drowned rat, framed by wispy black curls. Towel drying her hair, she dressed in the courtroom clothes that were all she had and went in search of breakfast, which she found at a local diner.
Still, the photograph in her purse kept breathing. Sometimes she heard a giggle, and, irrationally, she thought it came from the bag.
After breakfast, she walked up Main Street and found a local thrift shop that was just opening for the day. She used seven dollars to buy a pair of secondhand Bermuda shorts, a blue T-shirt that had a dragonfly stenciled on the front, and an aqua cotton hoodie. She traded her black flats for a pair of flip-flops and threw the kneesocks away.
Walking out of the store, she smiled, feeling really free for the first time. She had a bus ticket to Florida in her pocket. In no time at all—just seven and a half hours—she’d be on her way out of here …
A yellow smear moved in a gust of black exhaust. A school bus. Small faces peered out from the windows.
Lexi didn’t make a conscious decision to follow the bus; rather, she just kept walking. On Turnagin Way, she angled left and walked up the hill. By the time she reached the four-way stop, there were kids all around, laughing and talking and dragging ridiculously big backpacks on the sidewalk beside them. There were mothers everywhere, too, monitoring crosswalks and conversations and movement.
A line of buses was parked in front of the elementary school. The carpool lane ran through a row of parked cars, parents dropping their kids off.
A black SUV pulled past her and stopped.
Lexi’s breath caught. From her place by the tree, she saw Jude get out of the SUV and go to the back passenger door, opening it wide.
And there, sitting in a big car seat, was a miniature version of Mia, with buoyant corn-silk blond hair and a heart-shaped