Fraying at the Edge Read Online Free PDF Page B

words.
    “A police dispatch? Where are you?” Quill’s voice remained calm as if none of the uproar in her life worked its way past his tranquil emotions.
    “I didn’t want to call, but I…went for a walk, and I can’t find my way back. I need Nicholas’s address, please.” The words were the right ones, but did they come across to him as frantic as she felt? She hoped not.
    “Sure. That’s easy. I’ll text it so you’ll have it without having to write it down. Listen, I’m only an hour from Bellflower Creek. I could be there—”
    “No.”
    “You’re still angry with me. I get that. But I’ve been where you are—fresh from the Amish community and feeling displaced. You don’t have to go through this transition alone.”
    She wanted to say, “Of the two—alone or with you—I choose alone,” but that would be excessively unkind, especially since she was asking for his help.
    The dispatcher spoke again.
    “You sound as if you’re at a police station. I could pick you up, and—”
    “It’s a car. An officer is helping me.” She couldn’t have imagined what this new world would do to her, but she would manage without him. “I’ll find others to help as I go along. Not you, please. Just text the address. That’s all I need from you. Okay?”
    “If you change your—”
    “I won’t. But thanks.” She disconnected the call.
    The phone pinged seconds later. Officer Barnes swiped his finger across the screen. “Here’s the address, and he said to call him anytime, night or day, and that you can trust him.”
    Ariana swallowed the lump in her throat. “Could you take me back to Nicholas’s house now?”

A clanging noise startled Skylar awake. It had to be the crack of dawn. She looked to her left where a digital clock usually rested on the nightstand, but it wasn’t there. During her few hours of sleep, she’d almost forgotten where she was, but the mooing of cows and the clanking of dishes downstairs were quick reminders. The past three nights had been spent on scratchy sheets, listening to the sound of restless farm animals.
    The sharp pain behind her eyes signaled her desperate need for nicotine. She glanced at the other two beds, where Susie and Martha were when Skylar finally fell asleep. The beds were empty. Good. At least one thing was going her way. She got up, went over to her suitcase, and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.
    Someone tapped on the door. “Skylar, honey?”
    She recognized the voice of a nearly unknown person, the woman who’d given birth to her. “Uh, just a sec.” Skylar shoved the cigarettes into a compartment of her suitcase and zipped it shut. Thankfully, when the woman had gone through her suitcase, feeling for pill bottles, she hadn’t noticed the squishy pack of cigarettes. “Come in.”
    She didn’t even know what to call her birth parents. They said to use their first names—Lovina and Isaac—but she’d yet to do it, not because using a first name was disrespectful, but because it was too intimate. She felt nothing for these people. Unless they counted disdain.
    The door eased open, and her birth mom smiled. “You’re already up.”
    Did she have a choice? Maybe if the Brennemans didn’t start banging around in the kitchen so ridiculously early. “Yeah. What did you need?”
    The smell of coffee floated into the room. Amish coffee was perked, made by boiling water bubbling up and spilling over the grounds. The process made for a nice aroma, but apparently they used hardly any coffee grounds in the brew. It’d been distastefully weak her first two mornings here.
    Lovina’s eyes moved to the zippered section inside the suitcase, and Skylar realized one corner of the cigarette pack was peeping through. Could the woman tell what it was?
    Sunday evening a bunch of teenagers had come to the barn and sung. Supposedly it was a fun tradition for single people, but Skylar had stayed in her room—a room she regretfully had to share with two younger