” “Juniper Hill?” Her forehead furrowed and she blinked, reading the sticky note twice. “I’m sorry, Drake,” I murmured as he continued to cry. Maybe some clean air would chase away the stink of too many days in the car.
I blindly felt along the door, hitting the button to roll down the windows.
I squeezed my eyes shut, giving in to the sobs for a minute. He’d never know that today, the day when we’d started what I hoped would be a happy life, had actually been the fifth-worst day of his mother’s life. He’d never know that for the first two months of his life, I’d cried nearly every day. He’d survive this, right? He’d never know that we’d spent a miserable few days in the car. If it was only me, I would have given up months ago. A sob mixed with a hiccup and the tears flowed until my tires were stopped, the car was in park and I was hugging the steering wheel, wishing it could hug me back.
We were probably only a mile from our final destination and the walls were beginning to crumble. How long could a person hold on to the end of their rope before their grip slipped? How long could a woman hold herself together before she cracked? Apparently, the answer was from New York to Montana. My own sob escaped, joining my son’s, and I eased off the highway for the shoulder. They fell down my cheeks and I couldn’t swipe them away fast enough. “I’m sorry,” I whispered as tears blurred my vision. Through the rearview and the mirror above his seat, his little face was scrunched and flushed and his fists balled. The crying stopped for a split second so he could refill his lungs, then he just kept on wailing. My new boss had warned me that this road wasn’t on a map yet so she’d given me directions instead. I swiped up my phone and checked the GPS. Maybe we’d been lost since the morning I’d driven out of the city.
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