My blood ran cold. “Who will kill you?”
“My stepdad.” She was shaking so hard she could barely stand. “He’s been… he’s been hurting us for two years. Me the most, but he started hitting the little ones too. Mom won’t leave him. She doesn’t believe us. Last night he put a gun to my head and told me he was tired of me being alive.”
“I have seventy-three dollars,” she said, her voice breaking. “I was trying to get to my grandma’s house in Tennessee. She doesn’t talk to Mom anymore because of him, but I thought maybe she’d help us. But the tire blew out twenty miles ago, and I kept driving because I was too scared to stop, and now I don’t know what to do.”Continue reading…