Molly:

“Cheryl!” I yell into the empty studio. “Where are you?”

I figure if I’m going to wander up the mountain with my tail between my legs, I might as well bring a friend. Considering she’s on ‘friendly’ terms with Moss right now, and considering she owes me a huge favor for the little episode at my bus last weekend, I am definitely going to cash in on that.

I slept like shit last night, if I could call it sleep at all. Maybe I passed out from sheer exhaustion for a minute or two here and there, but that didn’t last long. Between the sadness I feel about losing Tucker and the embarrassment I’m dealing with from my viral article, there’s not enough wine in the world to knock me out for any extended period of time.

My phone hasn’t stopped ringing, people I haven’t talked to since high school suddenly highly interested in how I’m doing. The last call I actually took was from my father, and even though I assumed he’d be appalled by my life choices, talking to him was comforting.

“I think maybe it’s time for you to come home, Molly,” he said. Not in a judgmental way, but in that parental way that makes me feel like no matter what I’ve done, he’ll always be my father and I’ll always be welcome home. Home to admit defeat. Home to take the safe job. The safe choice. To get back to living a normal life.

“Cheryl!” I shout. I’ve tried to call her multiple times, tried to stop by her apartment, but she was nowhere to be found, even at 7 a.m. I wander through the half dark studio and find her in the office, her head resting on the desk. She’s sobbing, and upon closer inspection, I can tell her hair is caked in blood. “Cheryl, what happened to you? Are you ok?”

She looks up at me, her face pale and her eyes red.

“He killed her.”

“What now?” I ask. Her hands are shaking, and her voice is hoarse.

“He killed Luna. Shot her in the head, right in front of me.”

She has to be kidding. “Why haven’t you called the police?” I ask her.

“He’ll kill me too,” she says. “I know he will. Oh my God, Molly. This is all my fault.”

I grab her and hug her. “It’s not your fault. What happened is not your fault at all. But what you do now is who you are as a person. You can’t just let him get away with it. The cops will do their job and he’ll finally be where he belongs.”

“He used your gun,” she sobs.

“I don’t care about that, Cheryl. That’s in the past. You need to go to the police now. And I need to sneak up there and warn Tucker that the cops are coming so he doesn’t end up tangled up in this mess.”

“What happened to Tucker? When I was up there yesterday nobody had seen him in a while.”

Now I’m crying, too.

“I fucked up,” I tell her. I explain the article, and how I was just trying to help him and instead I ended up overstepping. I tell her about our plan to run away, to get married, to start a new life together.

“You do know none of that could’ve happened if he wasn’t willing to turn himself in?”

“I don’t know. I wanted to believe that we could live this lie. I thought maybe eventually he’d come around and do the right thing.”

“I wouldn’t stress, Molly. I like Tucker. I think he’s a nice guy, but if he really cared about you he wouldn’t want to put you through constantly wondering if someone’s going to show up one day and tell you that they’re his wife or his kids,” Cheryl says. “I’ll make a deal with you. You go to the police with me. We’ll let them handle the situation. Maybe if the cops talk to Tucker, he’ll come to his senses. Maybe they can offer him help that we can’t. Sometimes you have to give them a little tough love.”

I shrug. I already put a walking target on his back thanks to my shitty article. I’ll happily bail him out of jail if I have to, and it’s up to him to forgive me if he really wants to. If he doesn’t, that’s fine, too.

“I swear this is where the campsite was,” Cheryl says to the police officers as they walk around the clearing in the woods. “It was just here yesterday.”

The only sign of life is a pit of coals where the fire used to burn. Other than that, you’d never know there was a group of men living here for who knows how long.

“They couldn’t have gotten that far? Right?” I ask them. “I mean, they have four-wheelers, but with all that equipment, they have to be close by. Don’t you have dogs or something that can hunt them down?”

“I don’t think you girls understand what kind of resources we’re talking about here. We’re wasting time as it is.”

“A woman is dead!” Cheryl says. “I watched her get shot.”

“I have no one reported missing by the name of Luna or even anyone matching your description. I have no body. I have no proof that a crime was even committed other than your word.” The police officer shrugs. “I think that maybe you two just got in too deep with some bad guys and wanted to bring us up here to scare ’em a little bit.”

“You have to believe her,” I beg. “They stole my gun and used it to murder someone!”

“Did you file a police report on your missing gun?”

I hang my head.

Seeing this barren campground is making me sick to my stomach. I keep looking around for signs of Tucker anywhere. His boots by the fire, his tattered hammock. God, I would give anything to have him in my arms right now.

“Come on, girls,” the cop says. “It’s time to get out of here. Time to move along, just like the Vagrants have.”

“Finally, right?” the officer says to his partner. “It’s been a summer of hell. I’m glad to see them off to their next town to terrorize.”

“You really don’t care, do you?” Cheryl yells.

“Not our problem anymore,” the officer says, shrugging.

I don’t want to give up on him. The thought of leaving him behind and pretending like he never existed, pretending like he wasn’t my whole world and the only man who ever truly meant anything to me, is not something that I can force myself to do.

I wait around my bus anxiously all day, all night, hoping he’ll come back to me, even if it’s just to let me know he’s safe.

On the same hand, I’ve pretty much stopped with all human contact. I shut my phone off, I quit answering emails, and I haven’t gone on the internet. I don’t want anyone to get in touch with me. No one but Tucker, at least.

I’m running out of hope. I really can’t go on living like this. After a week of just dwelling, just existing, wallowing in my sadness, I make the executive decision that it’s time for me to move on. He’s gone, and rightly so.

It’s time for me to go home. Time for me to park my bus in my parents’ driveway and figure out how I’m going to pick up some pieces of this failed life experiment and turn them into a life worth living for me.