Chapter One Autumn Wilcox watched her dear friend on the couch, clinging to the last fragments of life, as she held in the pain ratcheting through her from seeing her friend in such a feeble state. “Autumn,” Bebe Fries said, untangling her hand from the lightweight blanket and hospital gown to slide a frail finger across Autumn’s cheek. “You’ll be okay, sweetheart.” “No I won’t,” she wanted to say. There was no sense arguing with her eighty-nine year old friend; something she learned years ago when Bebe first offered her a room in the single-wide trailer. “Nothing will be the same,” she said with a breathy gasp and slid off the coffee table to kneel beside her. Her ferret, Hopper, burrowed into Bebe’s side then went still. Even he knew the mood was bleak. “No, it won’t. You’ll have this trailer but won’t stay. You’ll find a new treasure, a new experience somewhere else and live up to your nickname.” She laughed and wiped her nose. “You gave me Runner.” Bebe had found her sleeping on the edge of the woods during a thunderstorm, with the …show more content…
Such a stupid act that had landed them both in jail during her last year of veterinary school… forget about it! Her thoughts tumbled to the incident that day, to what she had visualized after hearing so many accounts how her father and mother ended their freedom. On her father’s way home from work, he inadvertently cut off another driver. That driver took the act personally and chased after her father. Instead of heading to the nearby sheriff’s office, where an officer could deal with the road-raged man, Dad called Mom to bring him his truck. They met on the side of the road at an intersection not heavily traveled. By the time he climbed out of his vehicle to explain the situation to Mom, the road-raged man arrived, yelling how he was going to kill Dad. The man bolted out of his vehicle toward them. Dad snatched the gun from the truck and shot him. Two hours later the man