Chapter 12: Three Things

Samantha's POV

The creek was loud and cold and a color I couldn't name.

I sat on a flat rock with the memory card in my fist and Waylon's flannel shirt pulled over my knees.

My feet went numb in the first minute.

I let them.

I thought about what Camille had done next, with the phone in her pocket and my family waiting in the van.

She had gone back to being herself, laughing and bossing and tired from the drive.

That was the part I kept coming back to.

Twenty-eight years I had been the one who made allowances.

Camille was the pretty one, the loud one, the one who needed holding.

Mom said it so many times I'd started saying it for her.

Now I had watched Camille wipe out my afternoon with her thumb.

Nothing in her face had asked whether I could take it.

I put the card in the pocket of the flannel shirt.

A branch cracked behind me.

I didn't turn around.

"I said not to follow."

"I didn't," Waylon said. "I stayed on the porch for an hour. Then I brought you shoes."

He set a pair of work boots, much too big, on the rock beside me.

Then he stepped back to the bank and stayed there, a good ten feet away.

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Forgot Me at a Rest Stop, I Forgot Them Forever from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.