She wakes up in Topeka...
...Or Lincoln. She's not sure.
It takes her a moment to remember where she is: a motel on the outskirts of town... but which town? The stale smell of smoke from the last occupant fills the room, fills her senses until she can't breathe. Thin curtains block her view of the city being wiped out by a sheet of slate-grey rain. The TV is blasting a repeat of some old show, black and white from the fifties, but she's not turning it down. The loud monotone of the laugh track drowns out her thoughts so she keeps the volume at full. She doesn't think about changing it over to the news, either. She's scared to watch, scared to see her face again. She watches the ceiling instead.
Ten whole minutes pass and she still can't decide if she's in Nebraska or Kansas, if she really drove that far last night, chased by the overwhelming feeling Edward Mars would catch up. He always did. She rubs her eyes and decides she's in Nebraska, even though she's lying to herself.
She is in Kansas, and she did drive that far.
As she lies in bed, she wonders aloud if her car will need gas; she wonders if she needs a new car. She could drive it for a few more miles. Wipe the interior for prints. Leave the engine running in the bad part of town. Take her collection of licence plates and find a new car to hot-wire. Isn't that what they always did in the movies?
Maybe. She can't remember. The last movie she saw was almost five years ago with Tom. She eyes the yellowed plastic motel phone. She wants to call, to tell Rachel how sorry she is. Tell the other woman that she's the reason why Tom will never see Connor grow up, why Connor will never have a father he remembers; why Rachel will never be able to tell Tom she loved him just one more time. She wants to call but she won't. They've probably tapped the phone lines by now anyway. When she pushes herself up out of the bed, a pang of remorse shoots through her like adrenaline: she won't get to see Tom again.
She never even got to say goodbye.
She picks up her clothes scattered around the room. She's been wearing them for almost a week straight and they smell like the hospital, her sweat, and Tom. Six days gone and he was still with her, reminding her of everything she's done. Just like the child she still feels like, she hates to be reminded of her wrongs. She would rather live in blissful ignorance of her past, but the brown tank top and black pants weigh heavy in her hands; she needs new clothes.
Five hours later, the sun is setting, if you could call it that. Charcoal clouds block out the sun completely, promising nothing more than another stormy day tomorrow. She runs through the checklist in her mind. She's checked out of the motel, cleaned up and wearing new clothes. Check.
Check.
Check.
As she leaves the local Wal-Mart, she pulls the hood up on her oversized sweater, and raises a black umbrella, shielding her from the onslaught of the cold rain and the potential risk of being noticed. As far as she's concerned, she blends right in. She unlocks the door to the rusty green Buick and by the time she's behind the wheel, she's decided to keep the car. At least for another day or two.
When she gets to Wichita, she's exhausted, but she keeps going, driving through to the next town and the town after that. She stops for the night, but she can't relax. She hears a police siren float through the paper-thin walls of the motel, a noise that is far too familiar for her. Her heart stops; her stomach lurches and muscles tense. She gets ready to grab the keys and go. The siren wails past and she relaxes. This happens several times a day. It's been 4 years and she's still not used to this almost hourly routine.
***
She wakes up in Honey Grove.
It's a small, piece of shit town two hours outside of Lubbock and immediately she feels homesick. Pushing the thoughts of home out of her mind, she tries to focus on what she's here for. She needs just enough to get her through to the next few towns. This is what she lives on; this is how she spends her days. Counting cash into a small pouch she keeps hidden in her worn leather jacket, calculating how much the store would charge for this, how much she could spend on that, and did she really need it as much as she thought?
Screw it.
She never was very good at math anyway.
She decides to she needs to stay, only for a few weeks, just long enough for her to make some cash so she can keep going. She finds a job as a waitress at a tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurant. The owners are kind; an older man and his wife. They take her in immediately.
She waits tables and feels more like her mother with each passing day. It's not a good feeling. Every night she searches the internet at the coffee shop just down the road from the restaurant. There's a sick fascination in seeing your name on a most-wanted website and as much as it pains her to see it, she likes the feeling and keeps going back. Eventually, she finds Edward's office phone number on an FBI website. She writes it on the back of her hand, but she's memorized it before she finishes.
The next morning, she drives all the way out to Lubbock to make the call. He doesn't answer. She tries again an hour later and he answers this time. His voice falters when he asks where she is hiding this time. She hangs up before slips and tells him.
Two weeks pass before she's back in Lubbock at the same payphone. When he picks up his end, she hears a click. The line's tapped. She hangs up after half a minute, but not before hearing him say that he has something that he thinks she might want.
***
She wakes up in El Paso.
Tequila burns her swollen lips and she catches herself before she tells him. She teases the story, letting words and phrases about her past slip out quietly. She's drunk and the man sitting next to her at the bar is paying no more attention to her than he is to the room temperature beer in his hands, but she stops herself anyway before she goes too far and he does start to pay attention.
An hour later, when Jason and his buddies walk through the door, she lets him put his hands on her. She doesn't think to push him away like she does every other loser who has tried the same, only for the simple fact that Jason is bragging loudly about his criminal record.
He likes to rob liquor stores. He's quite good at it, too; likens himself to a modern day Clyde. And would she like to be his Bonny?
Through her drunken haze, she realises she has found the answer to her problem. A bank is just a step up from a liquor store, and Jason seems stupid enough to do anything she wants him to. She lets him push her up against the bar slip his hand down her jeans when she agrees to go home with him. Jason tells her that he knows girls like her; he has a good feeling about this. Her palms stick to the honey glaze of week-old booze and spit on the bar, leaning back when he presses into her.
She feels sick.
***
She wakes up in Albuquerque.
She's weighted down by an arm and suddenly feels scared, or maybe ashamed. She's been so detached lately; she can't separate emotions from one another. Giddy from guilty, excited from exhausted; they're just words to her now.
One thing she does know: she's definitely not happy. She hasn't felt that word in a long time.
Jason rolls over, his hot breath pulsing against her cheek. She can't bring herself to look at him, be near him right now and not feel like throwing up. She gets out of the bed and locks herself in the bathroom.
Today's the day they rob the bank. The last two weeks were spent going over the plan she had created. Jason ran the rules past the others until he was sure they stuck: Masks on at all times; money from the vault only; no one gets hurt. Last night they went through it once more and she was positive that by now all of them could rob this place in their sleep. It was all in the details, she reminded him. The thought that in a few hours, she would be doing something so insane causes adrenaline to hit her full force and she leans on the sink to catch her breath.
When she looks at herself in the mirror, she can't even recognise the person looking back. She's hardened herself, toughened her exterior, and brought out someone she never knew she had inside. She's prepared herself for this day.
There's no going back.
She tries to remind herself that she's just acting; she's just like an actress in a movie. It was only pretend. Like an actress, she was playing a part.
And the award goes to...
Twenty minutes later, he's awake and she's left her old self in the bathroom and Maggie is straddling Jason, waking him up in the way she knows he loves.
***
She wakes up in . . .
Little Rock. She's in Little Rock. The plane's small, cast-iron wing is pressing into her palm like a piece of ice on a cold day. Never melting, burning into her freezing hands. She glances at the clock on the wall through tears. Everything looks hazy. The next five months pass by in a blur.
***
She wakes up in St. Louis.
She wakes up in Lexington.
She wakes up in Knoxville.
She wakes up in Birmingham.
She starts to wonder: if she wakes up in a different place, in a different time, with a different name, would she become a different person? Every night before her mind drifts off to sleep, she tells herself that one day this will happen. If she believes she can be different, this mess she's made will all disappear.
It's good to be positive. Or so she's heard.
She stops in Tallahassee long enough to buy a bottle of water. Her subconscious telling her that Edward probably has someone waiting for her to stop in Tallahassee, waiting for her to make a mistake and go somewhere she was supposed to be four years ago. She's lost in her panic to get in and out without being seen when a man wearing a suit and a scowl runs her down as she's leaving the 7eleven. His briefcase knocks her to one side and when he growls at her to watch where she's walking; his smooth southern drawl stops her cold.
Suddenly she's not in the gas station anymore. She's eight years old and Wayne has a vice grip on her tiny wrist. He tells her in his drunken stupor to watch where she's walking. She doesn't say anything about it being his own fault he fell, she just lets him pull her closer into his lap, twisting her hand around until she cries out in pain.
Next time, he growls into her ear, he'll break her pretty little arm.
It wasn't too long after that that she was in a cast, her mom reminding her to stay out of Wayne's way.
By the time she's behind the wheel, the memory has come and gone. She starts the car and sets out again, putting the road, the gas station, that man, and Wayne far behind her.
***
She's in Miami for six months before she wakes up and realises that she can't stay here.
***
She doesn't sleep for four days, and when she finally does, she's on a plane to Melbourne. The flight attendant is leaning over her, shaking her awake, and telling her with a faint accent that they're about to land, and "would you please fasten your seatbelt and put your tray up, dear?" She nods and does as she's told, glancing at the empty seat beside her, reminding her that it was just a dream. Kevin isn't with her. He never will be. He's probably scouring police records to find a profile that would match his Monica and telling authorities that she was headed for Costa Rica when he noticed the tickets meant for their honeymoon were gone.
It was just too bad for him that she exchanged them for Australia the day he gave them to her.
***
She wakes up in Ray Mullens' sheep pen.
This time, there isn't a shotgun in her face. She's taken to napping after tending to the animals every afternoon. It's been two and a half months and soon, naps won't be so easy to come by, so she tries to enjoy them while she can. Already having saved up two thousand dollars, she's nearly ready to pack it in and move on, looking forward to being on the run again. As if staying in one place for too long caused her more anxiety than running.
Glancing at her watch, she notices that it's almost suppertime. She mumbles a string of obscenities, cursing herself for sleeping so long. Ray'll be expecting dinner and she won't have anything ready when he gets in. She yawns and stretches, pushing herself up off the ground. She's at the house in less than ten minutes.
***
She wakes up in a holding cell in Sydney International Airport feeling more exhausted than before. She doesn't even know how she could sleep when she knew what would happen to her in less than 48 hours. This was it. This was the end. For the rest of her life, she would only ever wake up behind bars... as long as they didn't propose the death penalty. If that happens, she thinks morbidly, she wouldn't be waking up at all then, now would she?
When Edward comes to escort her onto their flight back home to the States, she doesn't look at him. Tears are burning hot in her throat and threatening to spill over freckled cheeks and if she looks at him, she doesn't think she'll be able to recover.
***
She wakes up.
Everything hurts. The handcuff is still attached to her wrist, digging into flesh where her arm is pressed into earth. She raises her pounding head, a hand rushing to her temple to relieve pressure behind her eyes, though it doesn't help much. Where is she? There are trees and sand and it's humid and hot and what happened? What's the last thing she remembers?
Plane crash.
Oh, right.
The memory slaps her out of the scary calm she was in a moment ago and she's crying. Softly at first, but then the tears turn to sobs and she's clutching at her side trying to catch her breath between gasps. When the sudden urge to vomit overtakes her, she can't stop it. Pitching forward, she clutches at grass and sand and dirt, dry heaving. Her stomach wants to turn itself inside out, but it doesn't. Minutes pass before she can bring a hand to her mouth in an effort to calm down.
The spots behind her eyes fade and her hearing filters back with the sound of blood rushing through her head as her breathing evens out. Off in the distance, she can hear the rumble of the ocean and for the first time, she smells the calming scent of sea salt and sun baked sand.
Taking a steadying breath in, she slips the handcuff off with the awkward grace of someone who has done it more than a few times, popping her thumb back in place with a yelp. She massages the joint and tries to get her bearings. Where is she and how the hell is she still alive? It takes all of a minute for her to adapt and she's pushing herself up off the ground and taking a shaky first step.
When she pushes through the bushes out onto the beach, she doesn't expect to find someone else.
The next few hours pass by in a haze of blood and sweat, needles and black thread, fire and water. Its night now and they're sitting together by a campfire. She can't help but stay near this man, her only friend on a beach of strangers.
"I don't even know your name," he tells her.
Monica, Annie, Joan, a thousand names run through her head in the split second it takes her to find comfort in his easy smile.
"Kate," She offers him, the name sounding foreign on her tongue. It's strange to be telling the truth for once, having ignored it for so long. His smile widens and he looks down and then up at her, making it hard for her not to let herself fall.
"Jack."
She can feel herself grin, feel the walls come down for a moment. It's been a long time since she let herself feel this vulnerable. It's a relief.
When mechanical whirring and the sound of trees crashing to the ground steal their undivided attention, she follows closely behind, not wanting to leave Jack's side. When the sounds get closer and people start panicking, she can't help but feel him place his hand protectively on her back. His touch burns through her, reassuring.
Everything was going to be okay.
***
Kate wakes up in Jack's arms.
The sun's just breaking over the horizon, peeking into their tent, creating a sunshine-orange and tarp-blue glow throughout the small space. Jack's still asleep and Kate settles down further into his chest, letting her cheek rest in the curve of his neck. Stretching out, she opens the flap of the tent with her toe, just enough so she can get a good view of the sunrise. She loves mornings like this for their simplicity, if nothing else.
Her fingers dance across Jack's shoulder, up his neck, across his cheeks, over his lips. Kate's memorised the feel of him long ago, the length of his body deliciously familiar under the small pads of her fingers as she tries now to wake him up as delicately as possible. When he mumbles something in between dreams and brings a hand up to find hers against his mouth, she knows she's succeeded. The moment before Jack opens his eyes is taciturn, like the seconds before a summer shower; slow and quiet and calm.
When Jack does open his eyes, he looks at her, and Kate feels warmth. When he kisses her, pulls her closer into him and murmurs the words "I love you," she feels whole. She realises that for the first time that she is happy. She has finally managed to wake up and it's only in Jack's arms that she's found she could become someone else … someone more like herself.