Page 42 of The Coffee Bar on Camellia Court

Her father was just pushing out the back door of the apartment, two large duffels stuffed to capacity, one with its zipper still half undone. Juno didn't like the look on his face, but she hurried back the way she'd come.

"Where you going?" he challenged, stepping in front of her.

"Our pillows," Juno said. "I left them on your bed."

"No time." His voice was flat.

"But I need our pillows—" she protested, panic rising in her chest.

"And I said no time," he snarled. "Get in the car. We gotta get outta here."

"It'll just take a second!" She tried to push past him, but he dropped one of the duffels and caught her arm, his fingers digging into her flesh.

"Now." His voice came out sharp, raw with something that might have been desperation. "Do you have any idea what they'll do to me, or to a pretty girl like you, if they get here before we leave? Get it in the car, Juno."

"Please! It's got all my stuff—" Panic set it. She couldn't just leave it all there in that dumpy place for someone else to find, to paw through. Her small cigar box of pretty stones, feathers, buttons, bottlecaps, and keys, things she'd collected from the different places they'd lived. And her journal, filled with the written treasures of her heart. Notes from Alex that she'd so carefully tucked between the pages, ticket stubs for the movies they'd seen, her first paystub. The secret stash of money she'd been saving.

Her father's face hardened. "Give me your phone."

She took an instinctive step back and pulled the device from her back pocket. "No."

"Juno." Her name was a warning.

She shook her head and pressed her phone to her chest.

"Give me the phone," he roared, his voice echoing off the back wall of the three-story building.

"Let me at least text Alex first," she begged. Tears streamed down her face. She wanted to run, to escape into the night. Her father would never catch her, not if he wanted to get out of town before whoever was after him caught up to him. But she couldn't leave her mother. She just couldn't.

Her father's head swung back and forth as he checked for signs that he'd been heard. "You're going to leave that boy behind," he hissed.

"Daddy, please—"

It came out of nowhere, a backhanded blow across the cheek with enough force to send her staggering. Her phone flew from her grasp, and went scuttling across the pocked and rutted asphalt.

Her father strode over to it, then brought his boot heel down hard again and again.

Juno stood frozen, her palm pressed to her stinging cheek, tears blurring her vision. Her father had never hit her before. Never.

"Get in the car." His voice was now devoid of emotion.

She looked past him to her mother in the backseat of the car, her head resting awkwardly against the window, almost like she was watching their bitter exchange. But Juno knew better. Her mother was probably passed out cold, completely oblivious to the fact that her husband had just assaulted her daughter.

The fetid darkness of the swampy wooded lot behind the apartment was unnerving, and beyond that was the unknown—another town, another fresh start that would only end in disaster again.

Behind her was everything that mattered to her. Alex. Claire. Her job. The place she wanted to call home.

Her father had promised things would be different this time. He'd lied. And he'd keep lying. And if she knew anything about the way evil progressed, he'd keep hitting Juno and her mother, too.

Juno had no choice. She got in the car.

As they drove away from Autumn Lake, Juno watched the lights recede in the side mirror, taking with them the last traces of her childhood. The last of her innocence tucked inside that pillowcase.

PresentDay…

Thestingof phantom pain on her cheek yanked Juno back to the present. She touched her face, half-expecting to find it tender, but there was only smooth skin warmed by tears. She didn't like to cry—it always felt like such an unproductive response to her—so even though there was no one to witness them, she sat up in bed, and wiped her face with the edge of the sheet.

She hadn't thought about that night in years—had trained herself not to. What purpose did it serve to relive the moment she learned how brutally her trust could be betrayed?

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