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weather. She was thinking about the gaping hole in her heart.

After powering through the airport, grabbing her bags and

getting her rental, Dallas programmed the law firm’s address

into the GPS, but she just sat there in the car for a few

minutes, staring at the traffic coming and going out of the

rental area in the parkade. It was easier to watch other people

come and go than it was to think about why she was there.

Her parents didn’t know that she was back in Topeka.

She’d told them she was going to visit friends in New York for

a couple of days. She did have friends in New York. She had

friends all over the place- people she’d gone to college with

who had moved away. She felt guilty about lying, but she just

couldn’t stand to get into it with her mom and dad. She still

couldn’t believe that she was actually back in Kansas. Or why

she was back. Thinking about going and collecting money that

Willford left her just made her sad.

Dallas pressed the button on the dash but nothing

happened. It took her a second to realize that she had to press

the brake down, then press the button. Her car fired up, the key

sitting in one of the cup holders. It was pretty amazing for her

to think that a button could start a vehicle. Her car in Tampa

wasn’t overly new and she still had to use the old fashioned

key in the ignition deal. She wondered what would happen if

the battery in the fob died. Probably disaster.

Parkades had always kind of terrified Dallas. They felt

claustrophobic and she was never sure which way to go, since

the normal rules of the road didn’t seem to actually apply half

the time. She did manage to get out following the signs. It was

much easier to breathe when she was back in the bright

sunshine of early morning. Her flight was a red eye, but by the