I would have been just as happy to help set up the tent, but I stayed there and made polite conversation. Sitting around the fire, I could see Edrard and Rosalinda a little better. Gentry wasn’t all that tall, but they were adorable little gnome people. Edrard had a thick curly mustache and beard, and Rosalinda had Princess Leia hair.

I took the water they offered me and, when I asked, Rosalinda led me into the woods, where I expected to have to squat, but there was an actual outhouse. When we got back to the fire, Gentry was talking to Edrard about sledging stones. Or I thought that’s what I heard.

By then, the sun was down, and we sat around the fire talking until I couldn’t anymore.

“If it’s okay, can I go to sleep?” I hated having to ask, but there I was, like always, a guest in someone else’s house . . . ish.

“My lady, I am sorry thou hast waited and art weary.” Gentry stood up and bowed to Edrard and Rosalinda. Then he gestured for me to come with him into the woods, further away from civilization. Twice I had to stop, because going up the hill made my hip feel like it might give out on me. The second time, Gentry held out his hand. I took it, because I wasn’t sure I was going to make it otherwise. I didn’t know how he felt about holding hands, but he held on to me the whole way up.

At the end of the path, where he let go of my hand, stood the tent. Pavilion, that was what he’d called it and, standing alone in the woods, under the moonlight, it looked like something out of a Robin Hood movie. Or like a miniature circus tent. I was so relieved when he pulled back the flap for me to go in. There were pillows and sheets, and he’d hauled all that up the hill and set it up by himself.

He handed me the little LED lantern he’d used to light the way, and bowed to me.

“If thou needest aught, I am without, my lady.”

“Where are you going to sleep?” I said, because the bed was big enough for two. Sort of. Two people who knew each other better than we did.

He pointed over his shoulder to the outside and then closed the tent flap and left me alone. I took off my shoes so I wouldn’t get the bed or carpet dirty. Then I took off my jeans and my bra, and sat down on the bed to dig through my backpack for my THC drops and a pain patch. I didn’t usually double up, but I didn’t want the pain to keep me awake thinking. After I took my dose and put the patch on, I turned off the lantern and laid back on the bed.

Then I turned the light back on. Sometimes all I wanted was to be alone, but now that I was alone, I was miserable. I missed Marcus and LaReigne.

“Gentry?” I said.

“My lady?” he answered.

“Nothing. I just wanted to be sure you were there.”

“I am here.”

“Thanks.”

I turned the lantern off again and pulled the top sheet over me. I wasn’t cold, but I wanted something on me for protection. I thought about getting up and putting my jeans back on. I thought about calling for Gentry again, but I fell asleep before I could do either.

I dreamt I was in a long hallway, with gray-tiled floors and walls. In real life, the hall wasn’t nearly as dark or as creepy, but in my dreams it was like something out of a horror movie. I’d only been there once, when I went to claim Dad’s body, after he died. I was twenty, and while LaReigne was off playing Air Force wife with Loudon, and Mom was having a nervous breakdown, I was the one who arranged for the undertaker, picked out the coffin, and planned the funeral.

In the dream, sometimes the hallway turned into my old high school, and I was going to take a test I hadn’t studied for. Other times, I was waiting to see Dad’s body, while the prison chaplain tried to comfort me. When one of the doors opened, I knew I was supposed to go in, but I guess my brain decided I’d had enough of that particular dream and woke me up.

For a few minutes I didn’t remember where I was. I sat up and looked around, because it wasn’t completely dark. The walls glowed white, almost like there was a streetlight outside, but it had to be the moon.

I got up, stepped around the tent’s center pole, and opened the flap to look outside. Gentry was lying there, sleeping right on the ground.

“My lady, art thou well?” he said. While I stood there like a dope, looking at him, he’d been awake, looking back at me.

“I’m fine. You surprised me. I thought you were asleep.”

“Nay. Needest aught?”

“No. I’m just restless.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I tied the screen flap to keep the bugs out, and went back to bed. Having the outside flap open let in a lot more moonlight, and I could hear Gentry breathing. I felt better knowing he was there. Like being alone, but not alone.

CHAPTER 20

Zee

   In the morning, the way the light came through the tent canvas was so beautiful, I felt a little buzzed, even though I was sober. The roof of the tent was held up by something that looked like a wagon wheel, balanced on top of the central pole. It reminded me of the parachute we used to play with in PE class in grade school.

I wondered if this was what it felt like to jump out of a plane, because I felt like I was free-falling. I was helpless, and there was nothing holding me. Marcus was with the Gills. Mom had disowned me. I didn’t know where LaReigne was. I’d lost my job, my apartment, and my car.

I’d felt that way after my wreck, when I was in the hospital with nothing to do except lie there. For a while it was peaceful, but eventually I crashed into the ground. I lost the baby. Nicholas abandoned me. I had no place to go. LaReigne rescued me, but living with her and Loudon was like Thunderdome with the fighting. Then the bills started coming, and the giant shit show that was my life returned to regular programming.

Thinking about all that crap ruined my little moment of calm, so I sat up and found my phone. I called Mom first, but it went to voicemail. Probably she was still mad at me. Or she couldn’t find the phone. Or she’d tried to carry things back inside and had an actual heart attack.

After I hung up, I looked at my call log, at that seventeen-second phone call to Uncle Alva. I didn’t even know why I’d called him, but the more I thought about it, the more tempted I was to call him again. He’d said, Don’t call me again, and I kept turning that over in my head. I hadn’t done anything for him to be mad at me. The last time I saw him, I was eight years old, right before he and Dad robbed that second bank. The one that got them caught. The one where my father killed a bank guard.

Uncle Alva had spent six years in the penitentiary at El Dorado. The same place my father had served. The same place LaReigne volunteered. I wondered how much had changed at El Dorado in the twelve years since Uncle Alva got paroled. It wasn’t that long ago, and there were lifers there. Men who’d been there before Uncle Alva and who were still there. Men who might know something.