Chapter 15

Neve

I’ve lost everything before. More than once.

The first time, I was seven, and my mother carried me across a border in the dark with nothing but the clothes on our backs. The second time, I was sixteen. The third, I was twenty-one, climbing out of a window with a bag I’d packed in secret over three months, one sock and one dollar at a time.

You’d think it would get easier.

It doesn’t. It just gets quieter.

I stand in the doorway for a long time. Then I step inside and start picking through what’s left.

The mattress has been slashed from end to end, the stuffing pulled out in fistfuls. My clothes, the few I had, are in a sodden heap in the corner, and they reek of bleach: two sweaters, my jeans, the flannel shirt I bought at a thrift store in Idaho for three dollars. Every one of them is cut or stained or both. My boots are gone. My bag, the one I’ve carried across five states, lies gutted on its side, its lining torn out.

I get do