There were plenty of things in my life I regretted, but I wouldn’t let this choice be one of them. Even if I didn’t end up staying in the area long term, the month I had reserved in Pagosa Springs was going to be nothing in the grand scheme of life. It was going to be a stepping stool for the future. Maybe a Band-Aid for the past. A boost to the present.

It’s never too late to find a new road, as my friend Yuki sang. I had driven all this way to Colorado for a reason, and nothing was going to be in vain—not my butt cheeks hurting, my shoulders aching, my sciatic nerve acting up, or even how much my eyes needed a light bulb and a nap.

And if I could feel the start of a headache right above my eyebrows, then that was just part of the journey, a building block for the fucking future. No pain, no gain.

And if I didn’t get into my car again for another month, that would be great too. The idea of being behind the wheel for another minute made me want to puke. Maybe I’d buy another car while I was at it now that I thought about it. I had the blood money for it. Might as well use it for something I would actually need and use since my existing one didn’t have four-wheel drive.

Now. New. Present.

The past was staying where it was, because as much as I would’ve liked to light it on fire and watch it burn, that couldn’t happen.

Mostly because I’d go to jail for double homicide, and that kind of thing was frowned upon.

Instead, I was moving on without a criminal record, and this was the next step. Bye, Nashville and everything there. See you later, Florida, too. Hello, Colorado and mountains and a peaceful, hopefully happy future. I was going to will that shit into existence. Like Yuki would also sing, if you put things out into the universe, hopefully someone will listen.

The hard part was over. This was my future. Another step in the next thirty-three years of my life.

I should thank the Joneses for it, really. Maybe not for taking advantage of me, but at least I knew now what I’d been in—who I’d been surrounded by. At least I had gotten out.

I was free.

Free to go back to where I’d spent the first part of my life, to see the place where I’d last seen my mom. The same place she had loved so much and that held so many good memories, as well as the worst.

I was going to do what I had to do to keep going with my life.

And the first step was to make a left down a dirt road that was technically called a county road.

Gripping the steering wheel as hard as I could as my tires drove over one pothole after another, I pictured the last blurry memory I had of my mom, the image of her greenish-brown eyes—the same ones I saw in the mirror. Her very medium brown hair, not dark but not light, was another thing we shared—at least until I’d started coloring my hair, but I’d stopped that. I’d only started coloring it because of Mrs. Jones. But mostly, I remembered how tightly my mom had hugged me before she had given me permission to go to my friend’s house the next day instead of going with her on the hike she had planned for both of us. How she had kissed me when she’d dropped me off and said, “See you tomorrow, Aurora-baby!”

Guilt, bitter and sharp, as fine and deadly as a dagger made out of an icicle, jabbed me in the stomach for just about the millionth time. And I wondered, like I always did when that familiar sensation came over me, What if? What if I’d gone with her? Like every other time I wondered, I told myself it didn’t matter because I would never know.

Then I squinted hard into the distance again as I drove over a bigger pothole, cursing the fact that none of these roads had streetlights.

In hindsight, I should have stretched this last part of the drive over another day so that I wouldn’t end up wandering through the mountains in the dark.

Because it wasn’t just the ups and the downs of elevation that came at you. There had been deer, chipmunks, rabbits, and squirrels. I’d seen an armadillo and a skunk. All of them decided at the last minute to run across the road and scare the living shit out of me so bad I slammed on my brakes and thanked God it wasn’t winter and there weren’t many cars out on the road. All I’d wanted to do was arrive to my temporary home.