Love Gone by Elizabeth Nelson Page B

Faith as stubbornly
holding out. “Give me your number. My dad might want to talk to
you.” Strangely she looked frightened as she said this, but Faith
chalked it up to a typical teenager concern about being grounded,
being blamed for the accident to the family car. Nothing
more.
    “No problem,” Faith reassured her.
“Seriously, it’s no problem. Really don’t worry. I have a teenager
myself so I know just what to say. He’s learning to drive. He got
confused and accelerated when he should have braked and here we
are.” She tried for a smile but got nothing but a blank
stare.
    “What’s your name?” Stick to the
basics Faith, she told herself. With this girl, just get her name,
give her your name and number and get out of here.
    “Lila…umm, no wait, I mean Emily.” She
said in a rush of words.
    Faith looked at her suspiciously. What
kind of person didn’t know her own name? The girl was obviously
lying. “Lila?” She said with a tone that always discouraged lying
when Liam was attempting to pull a fast one.
    “No! Emily! Are you deaf? I said
Emily, Emily, Emily.”
    “Okay, okay,” Faith retreated half a
step in defense, “Sorry. My mistake. Emily.” Whatever this crazy
girl wanted to call herself was fine by her. She wasn’t her
daughter and she wasn’t her problem. Get her name. Give her your
name and information. Get you, Liam, and the baby out of here
safely, she reminded herself again.
    “My name is Faith. Here’s my phone
number and my address in case you need it for your parents, for the
insurance company, your mechanic…whoever. I’m just going to go
ahead and write it all down for you. You don’t need to do a thing.
Just hang on a second…”
    As quickly as she could she wrote it
all out on the back of store receipt she had in her pocket.
Thankfully she always carried a pen with her. Her mama had always
told her that a pen could save a lot of hassle in a hurry and she’d
seen the truth in that several times over the years.
    Handing it over to Emily, she gave her
another once over with the practiced eye of a mom with a clumsy
son. Liam was always getting banged up it seemed, so over the years
Faith had perfected her ability to sense or spot a medical
emergency even when nothing was obviously broken or bleeding.
Thankfully, the girl seemed fine. Mentally disturbed obviously.
Afraid of her strict parents, obviously. But nothing physically
wrong. Not that she could see. Nothing that Emily was
volunteering.
    “Okay, well I guess we’re all set
here, huh. Is your car okay to drive?”
    When Emily didn’t respond, Faith
looked up from where she was replacing her insurance card into the
folio Mac always insisted they keep the car registration and
insurance organized with and stored in the glove compartment. She
noticed that Emily was staring past her. Over her shoulder and
through the windshield of her car, straight into Liam’s frantic
eyes.
    Neatly stepping in front of her so as
to cut off her view of Liam – she didn’t like how ‘Emily’ was
staring at her son --Faith said again with forced politeness, “Are
we all good then? You can drive right?”
    “Yeah, okay.” Emily conceded. She
started to turn around and then with a quick pivot she came up to
Faith and whispered hotly in her ear, “You ought to be more
careful. You and him need to be real careful.”
    Automatically Faith put up a hand to
push Emily back and away from herself. This girl was too close for
comfort and her breath steamed and stank in the air between them.
At this close range she could see the pockmarks of old acne scars
in her skin and her eyes had a peculiar flat sheen to them that
didn’t look normal or natural. She wondered if she was on drugs or
something and without being entirely sure why, she was suddenly
afraid of her.
    She wished she hadn’t just handed over
her address and phone number, even though it was the responsible
thing to do, she wished she hadn’t done it. She felt the fear rise
up in