sort of Sleeping Beauty …”
“Oh. I was some kind of space alien or something. It was weird.”
“Can you tell me what you did?” she asked. Was it as bad as what I’m going to do?
“That’s one question you don’t ask someone who’s gone underground,” Naomi said. “It would put both you and me in jeopardy. I don’t like that we know as much as we do about what you guys are plotting.” She put the other wigs back in the box. “I’ll tell you though, people died because of what Forrest and I did. That part was an accident. We never meant that to happen, but we’d end up on death row alongside Andie if we got caught. And our kids …” Naomi’s voice trailed off. She peered into the sling at her son, then closed her eyes for a moment as though imagining the worst.
CeeCee shivered. She could feel the dread that hung over Naomi’s world. “You won’t get caught,” she said, as if she knew that for a fact. She looked at herself in the mirror. A blond Sleeping Beauty stared back at her. “I can’t believe I’m really going to do this.”
“You’re scared?” Naomi asked.
CeeCee nodded.
Naomi closed the box and moved it to the floor. “Think of a time you were courageous,” she said.
CeeCee thought. She’d never done anything that qualified as courageous. “I can’t think of anything.”
“I don’t mean mountain climbing,” Naomi said. “I mean something courageous you did in your everyday life.”
She suddenly remembered being with her mother when she died. She’d been terrified, unable to imagine what it would be like to be with her when life left her body, yet she knew her mother needed her there, and so she stayed. She held her mother’s bruised hand as she left the world. It had taken all the courage she had.
“Did you think of something?” Naomi asked.
“I stayed with my mother while she died,” she said.
“Oh, CeeCee.” Naomi touched her shoulder. “How old were you?”
“Twelve.”
“Damn, you were courageous,” Naomi said. “I couldn’t have done that when I was twelve. When you start getting nervous, remember the courage you had that day and you’ll start feeling it again. Okay?”
She doubted it would be that simple. “All right. I’ll try.” CeeCee lifted the mask from her head. “Thanks, Naomi,” she said. “For everything.”
She and Tim made love on the mattress in the small bedroom that night. Her body felt even more numb than usual when he entered her, and she was angry at it. She thought of Ronnie telling her to fake it. Who knew when she and Tim would get to make love again? How long would they be apart? It would be a gift for him. A gift that would keep her in his mind until they were together again.
She began to pant, to writhe a little beneath him. Not wanting to overdo it, she only let a small moan escape her lips, but she felt his excitement mount and she grew more vocal. It was pretty easy once she got into it. She arched her back, biting the corner of the pillow as she shuddered with her counterfeit orgasm.
Tim came an instant after her performance. “Oh, babe,” he said, his breath hot against her ear. “That was the best ever. The best ever.”
“It was,” she agreed.
He rolled onto his side, pulling the covers over her shoulder as he held her close.
“I love you so much.”
“I love you, too,” he said. “I want you to know how much I appreciate what you’re doing for me. For Andie. It’s so generous.”
“Thank you.” She liked the acknowledgment.
“And that was phenomenal sex.”
“It was,” she said again. She felt guilty for misleading him.
“You weren’t faking that, were you?”
Damn. Why did he have to ask her straight out like that? How could she lie to the man she loved? It would make a mockery of their relationship.
“Of course not,” she said, her heart sinking a little with the words.
Tim let out a long sigh. “Tomorrow’s going to be hard, babe,” he said. “And I realized when I saw you in that Sleeping Beauty getup that you have the hardest job of the three of us. Do you regret saying you’d help us?”
She hesitated. Did she? She was doing something magnificent, Naomi had said. “I don’t think I’ll know the answer to that until it’s over,” she said. “I … you know what I’ll regret, Tim. I’ve told you so many times, you’re sick of hearing it.”
“What?” He sounded puzzled. How could he possibly not know?
“I’m worried about how we’ll ever get to see each other again,” she said.
He hugged her. “That, my little Sleeping Beauty, should be the least of your worries.”
What did he mean? Why couldn’t he, for once, tell her exactly how they would work it out? She was tired of his vague responses to the question. She needed to know more. She needed details. And this was her last chance to ask for them.
“Tim,” she whispered, gathering her courage, “I need to know what you mean when you say it will work out. At least tell me what might happen. How will you be able to let me know where you are? How can you do that without putting yourself … putting both of us, at risk?”
He didn’t respond, and she turned to look at him. His eyes were closed, his breathing soft and even, and she knew she would get no answers from him tonight.
Chapter Ten
It just occurred to me that you might have your driver’s license by now. All I can say about that is “Watch out, world!”
THERE WAS SOMETHING NO ONE HAD ANTICIPATED: Although CeeCee knew how to drive—barely—she’d never driven a stick shift. She’d had her provisional license less than a year, and her foster mother had let her drive their car to run close-to-home errands, but the clutch and stick shift were alien to her. So alien that she hadn’t even thought to mention it the night before, when they’d told her she could have one of Naomi and Forrest’s cars.
“All we’ve got is manual.” Forrest blew out a stream of smoke and looked from one rusted car to another. The dented vehicles appeared no better in the morning light than they had the afternoon before. Their paint was worn so thin it was hard to tell what colors they’d once been.
She shivered inside her jacket. “I’m sorry,” she said to Tim. “Why didn’t you tell us you couldn’t drive?” Marty asked.
“I can drive,” she insisted. “Just not a stick.”
“Okay.” Tim put his hand on her neck and gave it a squeeze. There was so much strength in his fingers that she wasn’t sure if the gesture was affectionate or threatening in nature. “It’s no big deal,” he said. “She’s smart. I’ll teach her in ten minutes.”
Thank God, Naomi and Forrest lived in the middle of nowhere so that she and Tim had the dirt road to themselves. The car bucked and stalled as she tried to find the balance between the gas pedal and the clutch. She felt nervous laughter bubbling up inside of her, but she stifled it, knowing that Tim was in no mood to make light of the situation. He’d awakened in his own head that morning. Any warm words from the night before were forgotten. He was a man on a mission to save his sister and that was it.
“Well,” Tim said, as they parked the car in the yard after her lesson. “The good news is that there’s not much damage you can do out here in this thing. You’d better take your time getting back to Chapel Hill, though. You’re