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old are you, twenty-two or something?”
    â€œMore like thirty-two.”
    â€œSo old as that.” Amelia smiled, gathered up the skein of yarn and plopped it in Cary’s lap. She handed her the needles with the long inches of knitting attached. “Here. It’ll keep you relaxed. It works kind of like Prozac but doesn’t cost as much.”
    â€œOh no, no. Thank you, but I don’t know how.”
    â€œI’ll show you. There’s nothing to it. Pick it up. Come on.”
    Cary did as she was told.
    â€œPut the tip of the needle through the stitch and bring the yarn around and then slip the tip back. Good. Now again. Great. You’re a natural. That’s all there is to it.”
    Awkwardly holding the yarn close to her face and moving it around to find the best spot with her limited sight, Cary did a stitch, and then another. They looked sloppy and loose, not neat and tight as Amelia’s, but she felt enormously proud of herself.
    â€œWhat is this going to be?”
    â€œA scarf. You just keep going until it’s as long as you want it, and then cast off.”
    â€œI have no idea what that means, and no idea how to do it.”
    â€œThat’s all right. You ask somebody. If you can’t find anybody to ask, go to a yarn shop and somebody there will show you.”
    Oh. Yes, of course. She could do that. In her amateurish way, she added several rows to the scarf. When her eyes got tired, she closed them.
    When the bus slowed, she woke with a start and blinked at the darkness out the window. On the horizon, a pale moon was riding the top of a cloud. She wanted to laugh, she wanted to tell Amelia she was going someplace new, someplace she’d never been, someplace no one knew her, someplace she could hide.
    â€œMy stop.” Amelia dug cookies and chips from her tote and stashed them in a plastic bag as the bus pulled into Reno, Nevada. She thrust the bag at Cary.
    â€œBut I can’t—”
    â€œCourse you can. Take it.” She patted Cary’s arm and struggled from the seat. “Good luck, child. I hope you enjoy the place you’re going.”
    With fifty minutes to kill, Cary shuffled after the rest of the departing passengers, and watched as Amelia hailed a young woman, engulfed her in a hug. Her watch said six-thirty-five. The bus left at seven-twenty-five. Panic trapped the air in her lungs.
    I can’t do this. I’ll never see any of my friends again. Not Arlette or Georgia or Marsha whose husband left and who sometimes joined me and Arlette for coffee. I’ll never go out for lunch or shopping or a movie with any of them.
    And what was she going to do when her pitiful little pile of twenty-dollar bills was gone? No way to get a job. She couldn’t use her Social Security number or her driver’s license. How could she eat? Where would she live? She couldn’t stay with Kelby Oliver forever.
    She should just call Mitch. There was a pay phone right there. She could just walk over and pick it up. As though the phone pulled her like a magnet, she swayed toward it. Only about five hours had passed. He’d be off work. She pictured him coming home, finding no dinner on the table, and going through the empty house calling her name. Would he know immediately that she’d run?
    Nausea tickled her throat with its furry fingers. She ran for the door and burst outside where she took deep gulps of air. It was getting dark, and the bus depot wasn’t in the best area of town. Clutching her plastic bag of snacks, she walked up one block, turned, walked down the other side. She was afraid to go far, in case she got lost and couldn’t find her way back. The shops were closed, many of them barred. She peered into darkened interiors with a light on here or there to discourage burglars.
    A tree, stunted by exhaust fumes, struggled to grow in a small square of dirt in the midst of concrete and asphalt, the square was littered