Archive of Our Own ^beta

   Keisha: I knew when I saw it. I’d told Alice, months ago, after Thistle and Praxis and the worst years of both of our lives. I made a promise. To myself. But mostly to her. They’ll stay the worst, I told her one night. Our lives will be better from now on. Until the end.

   She smiled at me, eyes tired, still with that air of mild disbelief that she’d been forgiven. She had. I was a lot of things, reader, but I was not a liar. Not to her. I would never walk that forgiveness back. I would never draw back my hand. For both of our sakes.

   Alice: The motel. It reminded me of that old motel, the one we stayed in, the one with history crawling in the walls. With Howard.

   Keisha: We’d been taking a smaller road trip. You’d expect we were both sick of the road, after all that, but, well, *laughs*, I guess we had a little more left in us. It was off on the side of the highway. 

   I looked at Alice, and she looked at me, and she placed her hand on the side of the truck. 

   “You’re thinking something, Keisha,” she said. I didn’t say anything.

   Alice: We got out of the truck, then, leaving it over in the place where the grass starts to fade next to the grit of the highway. It was completely abandoned, but in better shape than we’d expected. The door locked, for one: we couldn’t get in the front. That wasn’t a problem. A side door was missing completely. Inside was dusty and swept with wind, but still very much intact. Nice furniture in there, too. Keisha looked at it for a long while, sticking her head in every room. There weren’t many. I just followed her.

   She left through that side door, and got back in the truck, and stared straight ahead while I jumped back in. 

   “I’m going into town,” she said. I nodded. 

   “We’ll see if it has an owner,” she said. I nodded again. I think she developed a soft spot for lost things, out there on the road. Or maybe she’d had it all along. She married me, after all. 

   Keisha: The old men at town hall looked us up and down, me in my hat and pants coated with oil stains. They chose not to say anything. 

   “That place has been empty for ages,” they told us. “You can have it if you want.” I turned to look at Alice, but she’d already grabbed the papers. I guess that’s one of the nice things about all the shit that happened to us. She’s willing to indulge me. 

   The days dragged out, one at a time. There was nowhere in this town to live. Nobody had built a house there since the 50’s. So we decided to make a bed and breakfast.

   Alice: Not much traffic, in small, forgotten towns, if you’d believe that. I learned to cook, would make the food while Keisha stared down people we didn’t want and handed me ingredients. We have people sometimes. 

   Keisha: Truckers, like me. Older couples on their retirement kicks. The occasional starry-eyed youngster, racing down the road until it ends, twirling and tipping and somehow ending up in this town. We live there for five years, in a refinished motel, sitting on the porch and waiting.

   We are a pause in motion. We are the blur of lights in the peripheral. Nobody looks at us. Nobody watches us. I like it that way. 

   Alice: I ask her once if she’s scared that a Thistle will find us. I know I am. Even if I saw that they’re gone. I don’t think I’ll ever stop watching over my shoulder, twitching at shadows.

   Keisha: I’m not scared. I won’t let them do anything to us. 

   Alice: We sit and watch the cars go by, at noon and at night. Most of what we see is distant headlights, travelers on the greater, more journeyed highway a few miles out. We can see all the way to it, from where we are. The land is flat.

   Keisha: Just plains and grass. 

   Alice: We wait five years. I watch Keisha get older. I watch myself get older, too. And then one day she turns to me.

   Keisha: I put my hand on hers.

   “I’m done,” I said. “Let’s go.”

   We leave the place to a resident of the town, an old man who needs the excitement. Not that it’s that exciting. He thanks us, and starts a garden out front. Good luck, old man. That soil is hard as rock. 

   We pack up our few possessions.

   Alice: And I follow her out to the truck. 

   Keisha: We drive away. Eddies in the water, something like that.

   Alice: I’ll follow her anywhere.