Red. It’s the color she sees every morning when she wakes up. It’s splattered on her pillow and dyed on her hands, crusting in the creases of her palms. She stands in front of the mirror, like she’s been doing so often in the past few weeks. Trying not to see her pasty skin clinging to her bones or the purple rims making her eyes look hollow and hungry for sleep, she pictures the full figured girl, who smiles because through bad she sees good. “This isn’t good,” she whispers down at her hands as she scrubs them under the bathroom sink. She watches the red turn to pink as it swirls around over the off-white marble.
A flowy dress drapes over where pounds of muscle and fat have vanished. Walking out of the bedroom, she passes through the living room to get to the kitchen. She allows herself to get distracted by the big bay windows where dawn seeps in catching all the yellows in the room on fire. The bay windows look out to the plot of land her father owned, and his father, and so on. Now she’s inherited it and everything else when he and mama died in a car wreck. With everything, loss over powers her, which causes loneliness to settle in, like dust on an atheist’s bible.
She so often thinks about the old red Ford truck with only two tires sitting in the tall grass. Like a loving mother worries about her kids, it’s always on her mind. Her father promised when she was a little girl we’d “fix it up real good,” is how he put it, with his heavy southern accent accentuating real. Now he’s gone and she’s well over being a little girl, being in her twenties. She’ll just be finishing up college if there wasn’t his store to tend to. She doesn’t mind the responsibilities, though. It’s the one thing that never really changed. She just wonders what it would be like if she shares them with him still.
“Emma?” a voice calls in the ranch house, as the screen screeches shut. She turns abruptly to the noise. When her eyes meet his, he givers her a disapproving look with his eyes, but smirks, “you’re doing it again.”
“Sorry,” she looks at her feet and watches herself take a giant step back, away from the bay windows, away from the golden sun rising over the swaying grass and the willows lining the long gravel driveway.
“Are you okay?” she continues to gaze at her feet as his honey tone voice -filled with concern- reaches her. Guilt washes through her, sending a cold chill in her veins, but she avoids the truth and nods. Emma looks up through her long lashes showing her piercing grey eyes and tries out a convincing smile.
He takes long strides to her and reaches out, takes her in his arms and squeezes once before letting go. A cough racks her chest and she covers it with her hands. When she pulls away, she must hide her alarm and fear in her eyes. “It’s nothing. I’m just getting sick, but I thought I would be better for work.” She hurries to the bathroom to wash off the red sappy liquid. Her throat burns when she talks and her tongue has this constant metallic taste she’s grown accustomed to.
“Why don’t you take the day off?” he suggests.
“But, Logan -” she sighs before getting cut off with a motion of his hand. Then she reconsiders, imagining herself looking out the bay windows again. For a moment she fools herself and thinks she is looking out the windows. “Sure,” she smiles lightly, relenting into his warm aroma.
Logan’s lips spread wide, returning the smile.
Emma watches Logan’s tan Chevy leave down the long driveway. His presence, the only thing that gives her some warmth in the cold loneliness, has slowly pulled out of her the farther he distances them.
Not sure what to do with herself, she walks down to the side of the house towards the barn. It’s been abandoned for years. No horse has set foot here since a year before her parents death, right before they nearly went broke.
She misses the stomping and whinnying, like a lot of other things gone; or when they snort and goopy, saliva stretches over the fabric of her flannel.
Something hides at the back of the barn that she makes her way to curiously. Slowly, her tender hands and long fingers pull a blanket away from the trucks engine. Dust flies and slowly settles. Tools lay around neglected to be cleaned up. It’s like her dad had every intention of coming back here.
She picks up the wrench and weighs it. The heavy metal in her hands flake rust over the blood splatters that stain her hands at night. She looks up and wonders if he’s looking down. She was always supposed to believe, but she never knew if she truly did. It’s the closest she can get to him however, apart from the scraps of metal meant to be a whole.
She pulls back the stool, and her hands strain to twist off the gas cap. It’s cracked. A number of supplies gather on her mental ‘things-to-get’ list. The Carburetor needs to be completely replaced.
Under the desk is a calculator her dad rarely used. She almost laughswhilee she calculates the loss of profit this will cause her. He hated knowing expenses. “You see naïve children are always happy because they are oblivious. No need to make ourselves unhappy by watching every bad pass us by. For as long as I live, I’ll see things for how I want to see them.” and he did. He was a child like that.
Emma takes her mothers ancient Cadillac, pressing hard on the gas so gravel and dust form a cloud behind her, and cruises to her dads autos store.

Three Days Later
She opens the screen door and steps on the dark wood floors. As the door creaks, the phone rings creating a short sympathy of sound. For a minute she thinks about not answering it. If it is Logan, he’ll call again and get worried. If it’s anyone else she has the option of hanging up on them.
Wiping her greasy hands on a rag, she then reaches for the kitchen, sweeping up the phone that hangs on the wall with a chord dangling down. “Hello?” her melodic voice calls sweetly to the caller.
“I’m looking for a Miss. Emma Evans,” a woman is on the other end. Something disrupts her professional tone.
“This is she,” her voice falls, recognizing the woman’s voice.
Her dad’s financer continues, but Emma’s heartbeat quickens drowning the woman to the background. The phone slides down Emma’s ear and she slips it to her collarbone, hiding the speaker against her as sobs jolt her chest. She still here’s the woman sympathetically explain the circumstances…there’s just no money. Emma crumbles to the floor, hugging her knees, ducking her head in them.
“I’m sorry, Miss. Evans,” the woman’s faint chiming voice sounds from the phone.
The phone must have died. The continuous busy signal as stopped and Emma’s body is numb from sitting on the cold tile floor. She estimates that she’s been down for six or seven hours. Occasionally tears would spill over the brim of her eyes, or she’d laugh at her insanity. Then there was the coughing fits that came and went, but she doesn’t care about the blood decorating the white underneath her. “I have to pull myself together,” Emma finally says to herself, faintly. She wipes the snot forming under her nose with the back of her hand and slides her index and middle finger under her eyes. In her room, she retrieves a duffle bag underneath her bed. She hastily plans her escape,whilee tearing the room apart, only packing some clothes and necessary cosmetics.
She always imagined what it would be like to open the rusted red door, and climb inside the cab of the Ford pick-up. She didn’t have time to feel the ripped seats, or the torn leather wheel though. She kicked the truck in gear. With a prayer, the truck jerked forward and she heads down the winding drive. She doesn’t look in her rearview mirror to see what she’s leaving behind because there is nothing there for her anymore.
Night is falling, though it appears darker with the storms making it’s presence known. And the windshield wipers aren’t working fast enough. That doesn’t make her think to slow down though. She has this creeping feeling up her spine like someone is after her. Logan would be looking for her right now. She wonders if he knows her well enough to know where to look for her. Even if she doesn’t know her own destination.
“Oh my God!” she chokes and tears spill. She squints the water pushing its way over her rims and the water threatening to penetrate the glass in front of her.
However, her tires catch over a deep puddle in the uneven country highway. Her Ford skids over and she pumps her break, keeping her eyes on the highway post. She nearly misses it when the truck jerks one way and back. It slides the other way and the back makes its way to the front. The wheel is like one of those car video games in the arcade. You yank it, but the car has a mind of it’s own. Soon the truck slides into the other lane, but no cars are coming. She wonders if it will spin around once, and she’d survive. She could take a second to recover then steer the truck away, slower this time. But she spins three times, and the truck begins to tip. She feels like she should scream. Like she should be scared, but she catches all the details in her alert vision. Her voice is caught in her throat. She’s thrown to the passenger side, the seat belt burning her neck and shoulder, then back and rams her head in the glass. There is a loud crunch, but she fumbles for the door and fights the pain. She feels her way around the hood to find a tree planted in the side of the truck. She doesn’t think twice about the red rust and young engine. She grabs her duffle and walks through the storm, searching for signs.
Grims, Kentucky
Coach Bus Terminal
1 Mile
Blood trickles down her chin and it dilutes with the rain. She wipes it, smearing light red on the back of her hand. Her clothes are heavy and cold. The trees canopying over her at the side of the road don’t protect her from the rain. Her skin is shriveling and her tears are coming dry. She presses her shoulders back and continues carrying her feet across the sleek pavement road. Only one mile, she tells herself, inching forward with new determination.
It was when she reached the Coach Buses that she wonders where she’ll go next, but something looming in her peripheral view makes her turn. A phone, sheltered from the storm in a glass box, with a fluorescent light casting down and out calls her. She thinks of Logan and where he is. Suddenly, the bus schedule doesn’t seem important. She then thinks of the responsibilities she’s left. And how they’re gone. Just one phone call then and I can go, she concludes.
“Hello?” It’s him, and he sounds distressed. Just hearing him brings this overwhelming ache in her chest and it swells reaching out for him. She tries to press the feeling down, but ends up breaking down into sobs instead.
“I don’t know what I did,” leaps from her lips. Through blurred vision she watches the buses leave and knows she’s not getting on any of them now.
“I found your blood…” he trails off. Emma holds back a sob, but tears jump like they’ve never been more exited for the fall. “What’s going on Emma?” he urges when she doesn’t speak. She continues to remain silent, for she’s lost her voice in all the heartache. “Emma!” She thought he called her name, but wasn’t sure. Her ears hurt from trying to control the crying. She can’t make out the sounds around her so she has to concentrate.
“Are you alright? Where are you?”
“It started three weeks ago, Logan…I don’t think I am. I’m…I…I’m sick!” Emma manages to choke out.
“You can get better,” his voice is firm and she admires how sure he sounds, but she can hear the fear in the words too. Fear that he may not be right.
“You can’t say that. You don’t know that,” Emma whispers.
“I don’t, but I have faith, honey. I have faith. Why don’t you come home and we can work it out,” he pleads.
“No,” she says weekly and childishly.
“Where are you? I’ll come get you,” his voice cuts into her heart and all she wants is to be warm again in his tight grip.
She looks around, feverishly. As much as she wishes he doesn’t have to see her like this, right here isn’t where she belong.
Only a few hours pass, when something familiar pulls up at the drop off of the bus terminal. Emma pushes herself off the bench, walking funny because she’s forgotten that her clothes weigh more with the water absorbed in them. The familiar something is him. Logan’s truck rolls back and Logan steps out.
Her dull blonde hair -darkened by the storm- trails behind her and her lungs burn. She doesn’t know where the energy comes from, since she feels like she’s going to fall down any moment, but at the last second before her joints cave, she’s leaping in the air, and then her lungs collapse as she hits something rock solid, but when her finger tips spread and sink into his soft, sun kissed skin, she knows everything will be alright.
“I don’t want to die alone,” she speaks into the curve of his shoulder and neck.
“You don’t have to,” his breath tickles her skin and it sends a shiver down her body.
“No I mean, I thought I was afraid, but dying isn’t so bad,“ She smiles at him. “It’s being dead and not being with you. I don’t want you to be alone. I might be alone too.”
“We’ll be alone together, knowing that the other is always in the others heart and mind.” He presses his lips tightly to hers washing all her fears away. She pulls away and brings her head down to her hands. Pain strikes her throat has blood splatters in her palm. “Let’s get you home,” she doesn’t look up, but she can picture his eyebrows turn in.
She lets him guide her to his truck, as she stares widely at her blood stained hands.