weather. She was thinking about the gaping hole in her heart.
After powering through the airport, grabbing her bags and
getting her rental, Dallas programmed the law firm’s address
into the GPS, but she just sat there in the car for a few
minutes, staring at the traffic coming and going out of the
rental area in the parkade. It was easier to watch other people
come and go than it was to think about why she was there.
Her parents didn’t know that she was back in Topeka.
She’d told them she was going to visit friends in New York for
a couple of days. She did have friends in New York. She had
friends all over the place- people she’d gone to college with
who had moved away. She felt guilty about lying, but she just
couldn’t stand to get into it with her mom and dad. She still
couldn’t believe that she was actually back in Kansas. Or why
she was back. Thinking about going and collecting money that
Willford left her just made her sad.
Dallas pressed the button on the dash but nothing
happened. It took her a second to realize that she had to press
the brake down, then press the button. Her car fired up, the key
sitting in one of the cup holders. It was pretty amazing for her
to think that a button could start a vehicle. Her car in Tampa
wasn’t overly new and she still had to use the old fashioned
key in the ignition deal. She wondered what would happen if
the battery in the fob died. Probably disaster.
Parkades had always kind of terrified Dallas. They felt
claustrophobic and she was never sure which way to go, since
the normal rules of the road didn’t seem to actually apply half
the time. She did manage to get out following the signs. It was
much easier to breathe when she was back in the bright
sunshine of early morning. Her flight was a red eye, but by the