I wasn’t going to run, but I sure as shit was getting out of the house for a while. If he wanted me gone, he could have a conversation with me and tell me himself. Or he could put a bullet in my head. Whatever. But fuck this. Even if I wanted to go, I wouldn’t leave this way. He had to be smart enough to know that by now. Maybe in the first day or two in his care I would have, but over weeks my feelings had changed.
I’d known in a vague way that Shannon lived in a nice neighborhood, but now I was walking through it, experiencing it live. I wasn’t even sure what month it was, which, now that I had my memories back, seemed extra disorienting. I was sure it was after Christmas, though.
I’d had opportunities to learn the date, but each time I’d only realized after the fact. Like when I’d been shopping online for clothes that first night... all I’d had to do was glance into the bottom right corner of the screen, but I’d been too flustered by everything. And the time I’d checked Shannon’s phone for his number. There wasn’t much time, and it just didn’t occur to me until Shannon’s phone was back in his pocket that I could have easily read the date on the phone. And even this morning with the red phone. I could have checked that, but I’d already taken the battery out when it occurred to me yet again. And by now I was too paranoid to put it back in. I was determined to remember to find out the date while I was out.
I hadn’t realized how close Shannon lived to town. He lived in a small town near Savannah, called Stoney Oak. From what little I’d seen in the car with him, there might be fifteen thousand people here, if I was being generous in my estimation. His parents lived inside Savannah proper, but it was still an easy drive to get from one place to the other. I wondered how he felt about his parents living so close. They could just drop in on him at any time, but so far since I’d been here, they’d maintained a polite and respectful distance.
It was maybe a mile walk into the main part of town—twenty minutes or so. Or it was that far into what had been the original downtown area at least. I wasn’t sure how much urban sprawl had overtaken the edges.
There was a small old-fashioned grocery store on the corner of a strip of buildings that looked like they’d been built maybe around the mid-eighteen hundreds. Next to that were several boutique stores that ranged in offerings from tourist-y gift shops to clothing stores.
I wondered what would ever possess Shannon to live in such a small town. Small towns were nosy. Everybody wanted to know everybody’s business. And if you weren’t involved enough in town stuff, people always wanted to know why. I would think Shannon would prefer to get lost inside a big city.
“Hello,” a woman said from behind the register inside one of the boutique stores. Her name tag read, June. “Can I help you find something?”
“I’m just looking, thanks.”
June had short pixie-cut graying hair that fringed delicately around her face, and reading glasses perched on her nose. The glasses were on a chain so she could wear them around her neck when she didn’t need them. She was dressed smartly in a black leather skirt that ended mid-calf, covering the tops of chic black boots. A somewhat fitted black top completed the look, accentuating the gentle curves on her slender frame. She had this freaky sort of old-lady/young hipster combo going on that made it impossible to tell if she was twenty or two hundred.
Sure, I’d met Shannon’s parents, but it was so weird being anywhere without Shannon or Trevor and being around strangers. This was my first unsupervised visit anywhere since the car wreck. And it made me want to climb out of my skin.
I know I’d decided I wanted to be with Shannon, and it seemed nothing could drag me from that determination, but it was unsettling being in this little boutique shop outside of Shannon’s direct grasp and not asking for help. Like, if I were a sane or rational person, shouldn’t I realistically ask this woman to call 911 for me? Shouldn’t I make some token effort? But even with how our relationship had shifted, I had a hard time realistically seeing my life with Shannon as imprisonment—despite the extremely limited times I’d been allowed to venture outdoors.
So instead of doing something rational, I wandered toward the back of the store to the lingerie section. I didn’t even know if Shannon still wanted me, and yet the first thing I did as a supposedly free woman, was shop for lingerie for him. Well, for me... but you know... for him.
The sales lady by this point had migrated back to the lingerie area as well. If I were a teenager in a baggy overcoat, I’d assume she was shadowing me for fear of shoplifting. But I was pretty sure it was more general nosiness. This suspicion was confirmed a moment later.
“Are you new to the area, or just visiting?” June asked.
I was tempted to insist I was just visiting, but instead I said, “New.”
“Oh? Do you know anyone here?”