Chapter 20: The Bag in the Closet

Carina's POV

I saw the headlights of his truck before I saw him.

I was standing in my own driveway at two in the morning with the trunk open.

Rosetta's weight rested on my shoulder, and a duffel bag sat at my feet.

The bag had lived at the back of my closet since Knoxville.

It held three days of clothes for each of us, four hundred dollars in cash, and Rosetta's birth certificate.

I had repacked it every spring for seven years.

Sullivan got out of the truck and stood at the edge of the lawn.

He didn't come any closer.

"Carina," he said, very low, so as not to wake her.

"Go home."

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing."

"You're putting a bag in your car at two in the morning."

"I know what I'm doing."

I did.

I had done it before.

I had done it in a motel in Tennessee and a diner in Knoxville, and every time I had told myself it was practical.

He looked at the bag, and then at me, and I watched him understand it.

He didn't say a word about it.

He didn't say, don't go.

He said, "Do you want me to carry her?"

My eyes stung.

"Why aren't you angry?"

"Because I'd be doing the same," Sullivan said. "If I had to."

I sat down on the bumper of my own car with my daughter on my lap.

I cried as quietly as I could, into her hair.

He sat on the curb a few feet away, with his elbows on his knees.

He waited.

"Your mother called me tonight," I said, when I could.

He looked up.

"She got my number from Nico's wife. She's been crying since the ball, she said."

"She kept a drawer of baby things from when you were small, and she wants to give them to Rosetta."

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