Page 39 of Open Road

Craig’s voice draws a breath. Gets ready.

And then—

Blue eyes.

Not the mirror. Not a real image, the way a thing surfaces when your mind reaches for something it didn’t know it was holding onto. Roam’s eyes, the particular color of them, the flat patient gray-blue that goes a different shade in the afternoon light on the porch. The way they were last night, after. The way they looked at me.

Not measuring, taking inventory, or calculating what I was against—some standard I’d already failed to meet.

The way you look at something you’re grateful to be looking at.

Craig’s voice finds the gap, tries to fill it, ‘you’re being ridiculous,’ and doesn’t make it through.

The blue eyes are still there.

I look at the mirror.

The dress is the right color. Devil was right about that. She’s right about most things, delivered without fanfare. The burgundy does something to my coloring I’m not accustomed to, giving it warmth. The wrap cut is generous without beingshapeless. There’s a waist, actual curves—the things Craig told me to hide are not hidden in this dress. They are present.

My hands are still on the fabric, testing it the way you test weight-bearing things and checking whether the ground holds.

The blue eyes don’t move.

A knock at the fitting room door, three quick raps, Lucy’s voice. “Janie, tell me something good.”

I look at myself for one more second. “It fits,” I say.

A beat of silence from outside.

Then, quieter, Devil’s voice, close to the door. “Try it once. For you, love. Not for him.”

I look at the mirror.

Craig’s voice isn’t gone. It’ll have its turn later, probably tonight at three in the morning, the way it does. The accumulated weight of four years doesn’t come down in one fitting room. But right now, in the mean light of a mall changing room, in a dress the wrong size according to no one except the man who spent two years making sure I thought it was.

The voice is quiet.

The blue eyes are steady.

“Okay,” I say.

Devil finds two more things before we leave. She has a gift for this, identifying the specific item on a rack of a hundred that is correct, placing it in a person’s arms, and moving on with no ceremony. She has probably done this for every woman who has come through the compound gates and found herself reaching for the thing that covers instead of the thing that fits.

Lucy buys herself three items with the decisive energy of a woman who has a clear relationship with what she likes and no patience for anything else.

In the food court, over coffees, she tells a story about the first time Reaper walked through a mall with her. The specific expressions on other shoppers’ faces, the way Reaper clockedeach exit in every store they entered, when a teenager on a skateboard came within two feet of him, and Reaper simply watched him go past with the serene patience of a man who has decided the threat level doesn’t warrant adjustment.

Devil laughs. A real one, genuine, the laugh that changes her whole face.

Three bags at my feet, the burgundy dress in the top one, and Roam’s blue eyes still somewhere in the back of my mind, looking at me the way I’m only now learning to believe I deserve to be looked at.

“Ready?” Devil asks.

Outside, the afternoon has gotten on with itself. The truck is in the same lot, the dent in the rear quarter panel unchanged, the tow hitch catching the sun. Devil unlocks it, climbs in, and Lucy is already in the back seat before I’ve opened the passenger door.

“Buckle up,” Lucy says. “Statistically, she’s fine, but I prefer to have options.”

“I heard that,” Devil says.