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Sara slipped out of Bea’s house before anyone else awoke. She had planned to set out without even a water bottle, stripped bare by the experience of her life here in all ways, but on her way through the kitchen to the door she saw a pot of coffee sitting cold on the counter, brewed the night before, and couldn’t leave it there unwanted. After a minute’s pause while it spun in the microwave, she hiked out over the dunes with a thermos in one hand.
She still wore Bea’s sweatshirt and sneakers, and now also her pajamas, too. Her hair was tied back in a messy bun and she squinted into the predawn air, wishing for a flashlight but also glad to be invisible without one.
For once she was as anonymous as she now understood she had always been and would always be. She trekked onward, sand mel
