A brisk November night breeze lashed the pines and bushes that surrounded Amanda Banning’s front yard. It caught at the strip of pink paper between her upraised fingers and whipped it away, tumbling it into the darkness. Amanda likened releasing the strip to sending messages in a bottle, only hers were sent on the wind, a practice born a month earlier out of isolation and the relentless silence after her six-year-old daughter, Chloe, had gone to bed. Amanda couldn’t afford a television, and the clock radio she’d purchased at Good As New on West Main had lousy reception. Amanda doubted the problem was with the device; rather, she suspected it was that her home was surrounded by too many trees. Occasionally, when atmospheric conditions were just right, she could find a station and enjoy some music that didn’t crackle, but mostly she picked up white noise.
The nightly silence had grown oppressive, driving home to Amanda just how alone in the world she was. Sending messages on the wind gave her a sense of connection with others, and a way to express her thoughts and yearnings instead of keeping them pent up inside.
She smiled and pulled her flimsy jacket close to hold the cold at bay. She didn’t really care if anyone read her notes. No one would ever know who wrote them, after all, and that was liberating. She could write anything she wanted, no matter how silly or serious. It helped, writing them. She wasn’t sure why, but it did.
Tonight her messages had been goofy. She’d recently walked with Chloe into the town of Mystic Creek and gotten a library card, which allowed her to borrow storybooks for her daughter and romance novels for herself. Why she felt drawn to love stories, Amanda didn’t know. She hung on the words written by authors such as Jodi Thomas, Susan Wiggs, Emilie Richards, and countless others. Nearly eight years in a nightmarish marriage should have forever banished romantic notions from her head. Maybe, she reflected, it was true that hope springs eternal in the human breast, because there remained within her a deep, aching need to be loved and cherished.
So tonight she’d written, I wish I could meet a man as kind and wonderful as the hero in one of the romances I love to read, someone who’d be a fabulous father to my little girl and make both of us feel safe. Normally Amanda wished for far more practical things, like enough money to pay her electric bill, but she was halfway through a story, and she was falling madly in love with a character named Jake. Amanda’s only question was, do men like that really exist? Her rational side always answered that question with an unequivocal no, but she couldn’t deny her yearning to think otherwise. Dumb, dumb, dumb. She’d be better off to believe in Santa Claus and strike the word man from her vocabulary. In her experience, man usually became manhandle.
Sighing, Amanda looked at the sky, hoping to see stars, but it was too overcast. Probably snow clouds. So far, she hadn’t found a snow shovel at any of the three secondhand shops she’d searched. She and Chloe would have to wade through the white stuff until she found an affordable scoop. Problem: Chloe had no waterproof boots. Why hadn’t she checked out the winter weather in Mystic Creek before she picked this town as their hiding place?
She shrugged and said aloud, “Because you couldn’t afford bus fare for two to anywhere else, and Mystic Creek defines the term out in the middle of nowhere. Mark will look for you in Olympia, Washington, not central Oregon.”
Blinking at the sound of her own voice, Amanda went back inside, locked the door, and fastened the chain guard. She didn’t believe the chain would keep out an anemic sparrow, but it might buy her enough time to grab the cast-iron skillet that she kept handy on the kitchen table. She made her rounds of the house, checking to be sure the back entrance and all the windows were locked. In Chloe’s room, she lingered to smooth her sleeping daughter’s dark hair, so very like her own, back from her forehead and bent to press a kiss to her upturned nose.
Chloe stirred in her sleep and cried, “No, Daddy, no! Leave Mommy alone! Don’t hurt her! Stop!”
Amanda’s heart twisted. Since she’d left her husband, Mark, Chloe’s nightmares had mostly abated, but every once in a while the child woke up screaming. Amanda sat on the bed and gathered Chloe in her arms. “It’s only a dream, sweetness. Daddy isn’t with us anymore. We’re far, far away from him. He can’t hurt us anymore.”
Chloe shuddered and hugged Amanda’s neck. “You were on the kitchen floor, and he was kicking you with his boots.”
Amanda recalled that night, and it troubled her that Chloe was reliving it in her sleep. “It’s okay. I’m fine. We ran away, remember?”
Chloe pressed close to Amanda’s body. Minutes passed before she drifted off to sleep again. As Amanda tucked Chloe back under the covers, she whispered, “Have sweet dreams, darling. Only beautiful, wonderful dreams.”
Beautiful dreams. That had become Amanda’s mantra to herself each night before she fell asleep, for she often jerked awake from nightmares, too, her heart pounding and her body drenched with sweat. She was coming to accept that no matter how far she ran, she might never feel safe.
Moments later, Amanda, still wearing her jacket, huddled on the worn old sofa near the single lamp to read more of her library book. Jake. She grinned as she drew a blanket around her for extra warmth. No man on earth would pick wildflowers and leave little bouquets on a woman’s porch as he had. Get real. But Amanda enjoyed losing herself in the fantasy anyway. It sure beat what she knew about reality.