A Reason to Run (The Camdyn Series Book 1) Read online

  She went on to tell me that I reminded her of my mom in some ways, but that I had my dad’s heart, and then she gave me the last bit of advice I would ever have from her.

  “Don’t let yourself be caged, Camdyn,” she said. “Live a wide open life and soar as high as you like, but find your roots too. Your momma never did that. Promise me you will find your roots.”

  Of course I did promise, and even though I never told a soul what she said to me that night, I never forgot her words.

  Now, looking into my own blue eyes in the mirror, I almost felt sick. I had no roots. Charlie and Trina were right. I was focused so much on not letting anyone cage me, and spent so much time running from anything that reminded me of home, that I forgot everything else.

  Maybe I am more like my mom than I realized.

  No, I refused to live that life. I would just have to do what Grandma advised – figure out where my roots belonged, and plant them firmly.

  -§-

  I sat outside on the wooden steps of the back deck with my atlas open to a map of the United States, trying to decide what my next move would be. Recently I planned my living situation around whatever book I was invested in, but my research was all but finished on my current book and I hadn’t thought out my next subject yet. Maybe I should move back to St. Louis, like Charlie suggested. That would give me time to regroup and to think, if nothing else.

  “You’ve been quiet this morning,” Trina remarked as she slipped out the patio door behind me. I saw her pink fuzzy bathrobe out of the corner of my eye as she lowered herself down beside me on the steps.

  “Sorry, just doing some thinking,” I said absently. Trina took the atlas out of my hands and started thumbing through it.

  “Charlie said he was pretty hard on you,” she told me. “If you’re looking for a new place to live, I think you should concentrate on this page.” She handed me the atlas opened to the map of Missouri.

  “So helpful, as always,” I replied. “I need to find my roots, somehow, where I belong… I have no idea how to do that.”

  “Well, you could start here,” she began, taking a tube of lip gloss out of her bathrobe pocket. She opened it and ran it over the map, drawing a large sparkly pink heart around St. Louis.

  “Ruining my atlas is not helpful,” I teased.

  “You know where you come from, Cam, so what is this about needing to find your roots?” she asked, opening the lip gloss again and writing the word “home” inside the heart. “Are you talking about your ancestors or something? How is the book on your great-grandmother coming, anyway?”

  I pulled the atlas away from her and set it behind me on the deck so she couldn’t do any more doodling.

  “It’s my fifth great-grandmother, and I’m having a lot of trouble with it, to be honest,” I sighed. “Her life fascinates me, but I just can’t seem to find the underlying story there. She grew up in Virginia and got married, had a baby, and lived a pretty normal life for a time. Then, her husband suddenly died, and within a month she was on a wagon train, alone, with a nine month old. Something terrible must have happened to make her leave everything. If I could just figure out what she was running from, maybe it would make sense.”

  “That does sound strange,” Trina admitted. “Where did she go, on the wagon?”

  “Tennessee,” I said. “She crossed a river somewhere in the backwoods middle of nowhere and wound up getting remarried right away, probably so she could change her name.”

  “How did her husband die?”

  “Sudden illness,” I told her. She looked at me quizzically.

  “Maybe that’s your story,” she chuckled.

  “You think she killed him, right?” I asked. She shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve thought the same thing myself, but I just can’t get past the fact that entire generations of my family thought she was such a remarkable person, almost a family hero. I mean, Grandma was named after her, and so was I. You wouldn’t name your kid after a murderer – at least normal people wouldn’t.”

  “Unless they didn’t know the truth,” she suggested, tapping her finger against her chin and trying to imitate some sort of New England accent. “Come on, think like the detectives on the crime shows. What happened after that? In Tennessee, I mean? Was her other husband mysteriously ill at any point?”

  “Number one, you are terrible at voices,” I pointed out with a laugh. “Number two, nothing strange ever happened again. They lived an average pioneer life from all I can gather, and they were well-respected by their neighbors.”

  “Well, that’s a let-down,” she sighed. “I mean, for the story, not for you personally, being named after a murderer and all.” She reached behind me and grabbed the atlas, randomly flipping through the pages.

  “I can make something up I guess,” I stated. “I just wanted it to be something remarkable, and I’m afraid it’s not.”

  “It will be remarkable because you are remarkable,” she told me, trying to assume a French accent, but sounding more like Dracula. “Seriously, though, I’m not going to be able to convince you to stay, am I?”

  I looked over at her, pouting her lips and batting her brown eyes like a child would.

  “Stop trying to guilt me!” I said, rolling my eyes. “I can’t, not yet. Not until I figure things out for myself.”

  “I suppose I can let that slide,” she said, resting her hand on her abdomen. In just a few weeks she would be someone’s mother. I tried to imagine Trina the way Grandma was, making us dinner every night, tucking us into bed… I couldn’t make the mental leap. This was Trina, after all, who used to keep me up way too late watching Leno and eating Oreo cookies in her bed at night. Yet here she was, ready to be a mom.

  “If you really have to leave, this is where your story is,” Trina stated, and I felt something touch my knees. I looked down to see the atlas flipped open to Tennessee.

  “My story is in the middle of nowhere?” I asked with a laugh.

  “For your book,” she explained. “And who knows? Maybe it would do you good to sit by a river someplace quiet and just think for a while.”

  “That sounds…provincial and old fashioned,” I moaned.

  “Right? You’re a history aficionado. What could be better than something old fashioned? And I will consider it a personal insult if you wimp out and go to Nashville instead.”

  “You know me too well,” I said with a wry smile.

  “Your great-grandma’s story ends in the woods of Tennessee,” she stated, linking her arm through mine, “so that’s where this chapter of your life should start.”

  “It sounds like you’re writing a book now,” I told her.

  “Oh, no,” she protested, “I will leave all the book writing to you.”

  -§-

  I prepared to leave Charlie and Trina’s house just after lunch. I used my phone to map out the cemetery where Willa was buried, along with the approximate location that she lived, and decided to pick the nearest town that offered enough hotels and restaurants to be considered civilized. After going over the routes, I figured my trip to Jackson, Tennessee would take around five hours. As I was putting my suitcase back in the trunk of my car, Trina came out waving my atlas, telling me I better not forget it. I assured her that I would be fine, and that I had programmed the directions into my phone, but I tossed the atlas safely to the back of my trunk for good measure. She hugged me tight and told me to be safe. I told her I would be back when little peanut made his arrival, if not before. I even said, “Aunt Camdyn loves you,” to her abdomen, which felt stupid as soon as I started to say the words, but Trina said he tried to kick me, so I guess I made some kind of impression on him.

  As I backed out of the driveway, I took one last long look at the house.

  “Goodbye, past,” I whispered. Time to join the land of the living, isn’t that what Charlie had said? I wasn’t sure how much living a girl could do in middle-of-nowheresville, unless she was interested in tipping cows or making moonshine, neither of which
seemed particularly intriguing to me.

  I spent the next hour traveling south on I-55 until I ran into the mother of all thunderstorms. Traffic slowed to around half its normal pace, and I found myself gripping the wheel so tight my knuckles started to hurt. When I saw a rest area just outside Cape Girardeau, I pulled in to check the radar on my phone. Much to my discouragement, it looked like it was raining from Texas to Illinois, so there wasn’t much hope of waiting it out. I drove my car to the nearest gas station, used the restroom, purchased the largest caffeinated beverage I could find, and set out again.

  A couple of hours later, I was completely frazzled and stressed out as I crossed the Missouri state line. Each semi-truck that drove past me left me all but blind for a moment with the back-spray from its tires. I was exhausted from the vice-grip I had on my steering wheel, and I doubt my back had rested against the seat at all.

  When I stopped at a restaurant in Dyersburg, Tennessee and realized my umbrella was in the trunk, I wound up making a mad dash for the door. I couldn’t tell whether the waitress felt sorry for me or thought I was crazy, so I tried not to overanalyze it too much. I was wet, cold, and fairly miserable. I was used to being alone, but tonight I really felt alone, which made it that much worse.

  Learning from the waitress that I only had about an hour until I reached Jackson brightened my spirits a little. As long as I could see an end to this trip which resulted in a nice warm bed, I might be able to pump myself up enough to get back behind the wheel. I heard my phone vibrate against the table and looked down only to see that it had gone dead.

  That’s just my luck, but at least I have the atlas in the trunk, just in case.

  I paid for my dinner and ran back out to my car, thoroughly soaking myself once again. When I plugged my phone into the charger, it began to start itself up. As soon as it was back online, I pulled up my maps again and started on my way.

  The rain was coming down in sheets, and it was starting to get dark as the directions led me onto a much smaller road. The phone signal was going in and out, so I stopped the first place I saw an opportunity and physically wrote the directions into my planner. No way did I want to be stranded in the backwoods.

  My eyes kept glancing at the clock on my radio, knowing that the waitress told me an hour until Jackson. An hour passed, and I told myself it was taking longer because of the storm. Fifteen more minutes, and I was starting to get worried. By the time an hour and a half passed, I was beginning to go into full-scale panic mode. I had driven past nothing but houses, fields, and woods for what seemed to be at least twenty minutes. My phone died completely again, so I was solely relying on the directions in my planner. Soon I was passing nothing but dark forest after dark forest. By the time I made the final turn and realized I was on a gravel road, I knew there had been a huge mistake.

  Staring out into the night, watching my windshield wipers go back and forth, I fought the urge to panic. I was sitting alone at the entrance to a gravel road in a thunderstorm surrounded by the night, with no phone and no clue where I was.

  I prayed for a phone signal and waited a few minutes. Realizing there was going to be no phone signal, I prayed for directions, chastising myself for being so impulsive. Why didn’t I just stay at Charlie’s one more night? I could have stopped somewhere and waited out the rain, but of course I didn’t, because I never thought things through.

  No, of course not. It’s pedal to the metal all the time, isn’t it, Camdyn? You are such an idiot.

  The thought crossed my mind to turn around and retrace my directions back to Dyersburg, and I almost backed out before I glanced down at my gas gauge and realized I was almost on empty.

  Probably should have put some gas in the car while you were at the gas station, huh, Camdyn? Brilliant!

  Finally, feeling utterly helpless, I dropped my head into my hands and started to cry. I couldn’t come up with any solutions in my mind other than pulling my car to the side of the road and sitting in it until daylight. Even then, who knew what I would find? At least I might see someone who could direct me to a gas station, or a busy highway.

  God, I am out of options, I prayed. With no phone signal and no directions, I don’t know what to ask for, other than for an angel to rescue me. Please send me an angel.

  Chapter Three

  I couldn’t tell you how long I sat in my car at the entrance of that gravel road, but I eventually sat up, scolded myself for being an idiot, and demanded that I get a grip. I wasn’t sure how to get myself out of the situation, but I knew I had to do something. Remembering that the atlas was in the trunk, I pushed the button under the dash and flung the door open. With the rain already stinging my arms, I cringed when I remembered how far I had thrown the atlas to the back of the trunk when leaving Trina and Charlie’s. I climbed up onto the back of the car, trying desperately to shield my luggage from the rain. The atlas was in my hand and I was pulling myself back out of the trunk when I was suddenly bathed in light. My head whipped to my left, clipping the corner of my trunk lid. I quickly reached up as a reaction, pressing my palm against my temple.

  “Are you alright?” I heard a voice say. I didn’t answer – I suppose I felt a little paralyzed, not sure what was happening. I saw a figure moving forward into the light. The only two thoughts connecting in my mind were that I had prayed for an angel and this might be the answer to my prayer, or that I was completely vulnerable standing there in the dark and had no idea from whom that voice originated.

  “Is everything okay?” the voice asked again, clear enough for me to discern that it was male.

  “I’m not sure,” I responded. “Are you here to help me or kill me?”

  As he moved closer I realized that it was headlights shining on me, so probably not an angel after all. I shielded my eyes as I thought I heard him laugh.

  “I am definitely not going to kill you,” he said. “Are you lost?”

  By this time I was completely soaked to the skin, my atlas was wet, and my luggage was damp. I shrugged my shoulders and turned around to shut my trunk, just in case he decided to try to stuff me inside.

  “Am I anywhere near Jackson?” I asked.

  “No, Jackson’s about forty miles from here,” he replied. I watched with a sense of dread as he unzipped his jacket and started to take it off.

  He’s going to attack me now, I thought. I glanced out through the trees, and was mentally preparing a flight path when he held his hand out toward me.

  “Here, you have to be freezing,” he said, motioning toward me with the jacket. When I didn’t move, he came closer and draped it around my shoulders. I lifted the hood up over my wet hair and tried to get a good look at him, but the headlights were blinding.

  “Is there a hotel anywhere near here?” I wondered hopelessly, thinking to myself how ridiculous that notion was, when I hadn’t seen the light of a house, gas station, or anything in at least a few miles.

  “No,” he told me, “but there’s a bed and breakfast a couple miles up the road. I can take you there if you want to follow me.”

  “Yes, thank you!” I exclaimed with more exuberance than I should have. He turned and headed back to his truck and I jumped in my car, pulling it around in a circle while he backed out. He started down the road, and I breathed a little prayer of thanks, following his taillights in the darkness. I thought for a moment about how crazy I must have looked, climbing out of my trunk and soaked to my skin. I could feel the water in my hair dripping down my back beneath the jacket, and I instinctively turned the heater on full blast.

  The blinking taillight was illuminated in front of me well before he turned his truck, but from my vantage point I couldn’t see anything that looked like a bed and breakfast. A shiver of apprehension went up my back beneath my cold, wet shirt. If it looks fishy, I will back the car up and make a run for it, I told myself. I looked in my mirror to make sure nothing was behind me.

  I slowly turned in after him, and when my headlights shifted toward the driveway I saw a b
ig white sign hanging against what looked like an old lamppost: River Rock Bed and Breakfast. A little further up the drive, I saw a white two story building in the distance. It was dark, though – too dark. Something seemed very strange.

  He came to a stop and got out of his truck, but he left his headlights on. I sat in my car and rolled the window down just a couple inches.

  “Hey, it looks like the power is out, but I’m going to run up to the house and let her know what’s going on,” I heard him say. I couldn’t get a great look at him with the rain beating down and my breath fogging up the window, but the way he bolted toward the house made me think he must be in pretty good shape. I wanted to believe this guy was trying to help me, but part of me also kept screaming that this was how slasher movies started. I watched his dark outline as he ran up the steps, and soon a flashlight beam streamed out the door and pointed toward my car. After a moment the light started coming toward me, and I peered through the headlights trying to see what was happening at the house.

  “I got you a flashlight,” he called through the small crack in my window. I hesitated for a moment, trying to decide if heading into a dark house with a man I didn’t know was really a good idea.

  “No rush or anything,” he said. “I am getting pelted by rain out here, but just take your time.”

  I rolled up the window, took a deep breath and opened the door.

  “Who’s in the house?” I asked as I shut the door behind me.

  “It’s my aunt Rosalie,” he answered, “and just in case you were going to ask, she doesn’t want to kill you either. Here, take the flashlight so you don’t trip over anything.”

  “I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t tell me if you were going to kill me,” I called through a peal of thunder, pointing the flashlight in front of my feet and heading for the sidewalk.

  “Then why bother asking?” he retorted, trudging along just behind me. He had a valid point, I suppose.