But after her grandmother died and she won the lawsuit against her father, giving her a modest portion of the money he made off her when she was a girl, she decided to take a cross-country road trip, alone, to visit the graves of everyone the Bannings had murdered during her time on their farm.
A few days in, she found herself alone in a roadside café in Amarillo, Texas, eating some of the best chicken-fried steak she’d ever tasted, struck by the realization that if she wanted to she could change everything about herself. Not in terms of wealth or her profession—the lawsuit hadn’t given her that much money—but in terms of how she walked into a room. How she talked. How, in each and every moment, she chose to just be.
Should she change her accent?
Should she glare back at strange men instead of turning away from their unwanted attention?
Should she laugh uproariously when she thought a joke was funny instead of biting back her guffaws for fear of drawing too much attention to herself?
It suddenly had felt as if her entire identity was composed of choices meant to please or repel the people who’d been in her life. And who was left? Her grandmother was dead. Her only close friend was the lawyer who’d won her lawsuit against her dad. And she’d given herself a new name meant to protect her from the Bannings’ obsessed fans.
If she was free to roam, maybe she was also free to pretend.
And so, when the waitress brought her bill that afternoon, Charlotte became Sammy, a college student from UCLA who’d dropped out to move in with her boyfriend in Miami and was maybe going to work with animals because she really loved dogs and cats but probably dogs more if she had to make a choice.
God, it had felt good. Like scratching an itch. Finally, she was someone whose past wasn’t draped in murder and loss.
At a Cracker Barrel in Lubbock, Texas, she donned a New York accent and explained to the family seated next to her how her parents had money and they’d bought her a car and told her to go on a road trip through the South because she was turning into one of those Northeast bigots who thought everyone south of Kentucky was an inbred fool. The family was from Dallas, so their eyes lit up as she described what they clearly thought was a worthwhile venture. They even offered to buy their new friend, Heidi, some dessert. Heidi declined. That would be taking things a little too far. She wasn’t out to swindle people.
Charlotte told herself these tissues of lies were the only way to discover who she truly was underneath. After a week of pretending to be someone else to strangers, she was confident the fundamentals of her character would pull back against the fake accents and the made-up stories, revealing who she was meant to become before her mother was slaughtered and her life derailed.
She’s never been a drinker, but she imagines that the joy and freedom she felt during those few days of lying to waiters, waitresses, and other road trippers were similar to what an alcoholic feels while they’re on a good run.
There were no rules, no limits. Along the way, she realized that most of what she’d done from moment to moment throughout her life was just a habit that could be unchosen with enough forethought.
But the insight she craved never came.
The true Trina Pierce, or Charlotte Rowe, or Burning Girl, wasn’t finally coaxed out of hiding by all the lies, demanding to be seen and recognized once and for all. Worse, Charley could no longer ignore that most of the anecdotes and pieces of trivia she’d used to construct her false identities had come from her grandmother’s close circle of friends back in Altamira, California, the same ones she’d abandoned because just a glimpse of them around town made her smell her grandmother’s perfume.
By the time she’d reached New Orleans, the first stop in her gravesite tour, she was overcome by a sense of loneliness so acute, she pulled over to the side of the road and wept for the first time since Grandma Luanne’s funeral. Maybe it was just guilt over having lied to so many people. Or maybe what she’d really coaxed to the surface was her grief for her grandmother, still raw and beating like a second heart a year after the remarkable woman’s death.
She’s not that lonely anymore, thank God.
One of the unexpected perks of Dylan Cody’s—Noah Turlington’s—deception was that it drove her back into the bosom of the only place she’d ever considered a hometown.
That’s where she reunited with Luke Prescott.
A different, better version of Luke than the one she knew in high school.
But thinking of Luke now isn’t a comfort. It only reminds her of how close he was the last time she did something like this. This time, having him nearby wasn’t an option. This time he had to stay in Altamira while she prepped and practiced and waited for Davies to escalate. Cole made that clear. And she didn’t fight him on it.
Maybe she should have. Despite the number of people currently monitoring her every move, she feels surprisingly alone.
She’s got a dozen unwritten text messages to Luke floating around in her head still. Right before she stepped from the back of the transport truck, she almost broke down and sent him one. But her support team would have seen, and then they would have reported it. And besides, she and Luke made an agreement before she shipped out: If she did get in touch, he’d only want to ask questions she couldn’t answer. How was she would lead to where was she, which would careen into how much longer. Why put themselves through that torture? No communication was better, they agreed.