Myra
I watched MacKenzie walk up to her front door, her leather jacket pulled tight against the damp mountain air. I waited until the porch light flickered on and she was safely inside before I shifted the car into gear. I couldn't go back to the bakery yet. I couldn’t face Tony’s suffocating, hovering protection or the way Leo looked at me with those big, pitying eyes that made me feel like something wounded.
I needed to be somewhere where the walls weren't closing in, where the air didn't smell like the sticky-sweet apology of a thousand pink frosted, heart-shaped cookies.
I drove out toward the old railroad bridge that spanned the gorge. It was a place I used to go when I was a kid, back when the world felt too loud and Sadie’s “moods” made the trailer feel like a cage. I parked the
