Free What's Left of Her by Mary Campisi

real stuff, not Jack’s. Just like before.”
    Evie wavers. She misses her children. She misses Rupe.
    “Listen to me, Evelyn. I can help you if you’re ready. Do you hear me? But you have to be prepared to walk away and never look back. Your past life is gone, erased. If you start thinking about your daughter and how pretty her hair looked with the sun shining on it, you’re screwed. Trust me, I know. The only hope you have is moving forward, right now, that’s it.”
    My past is gone.
    “It’s your choice.”
    My past is gone.
    “You ready?”
    Evie’s head moves and she’s not sure if she’s nodded or not. Maybe she shook her head. Or maybe not.
    “Okay.” Peggy scratches her chin, tilts her blonde-streaked head and settles her gaze on Evie’s hair. “We’ll lose the hair first. Chop it real short and dye it. What color do you want to be? A redhead? A blonde?”
    Evie touches her hair, fingers a few strands. She must have nodded. “I don’t know.”
    “You’ll need some clothes, too. You can’t look like you’re on the run. And an identity. We’ll have to take care of that, too.”
    “An identity?”
    Peggy’s thin lips pull into a slow smile. “You leave that to me. I know people.”
    “But whose identity would I be taking? Are these real people or fictitious ones?”
    “They’re dead ones.”
    “Dead?”
    Peggy shrugs. “Yeah, dead, so what? It’s not like they’re going to get pissed at you or something. Trust me.”
    This is no longer a simple need to evaporate into the landscape; this is now something else, something almost sinister.
    “What? Why are you shaking your head? You want to stay Evelyn whatever your last name is? Huh? You want someone to walk up to you two years from now, or maybe three, and say ‘Hey, aren’t you the woman from wherever? The one who disappeared?’ Is that what you want?”
    “No.”
    “Then you’ve got no choice. Evelyn’s dead. Right now. Move forward.” Evie stares. Peggy laughs. “It’s easy. Trust me.”
    “This identity thing, how much does it cost?”
    “Two thousand.”
    “Two thousand dollars? I don’t have that kind of money.”
    “I didn’t think you would. That’s okay. You can pay me back.”
    “I don’t even have a job.”
    “You will. You’ll have a whole new world of second chances and all you have to do is say yes, starting now.”
     

Chapter 10
     
    Quinn peers out of the tiny window in the attic, watching Annalise ride her bike up and down the street. She is the only one who moves through the day with some semblance of normalcy. Maybe because they’ve gone out of their way to embellish the story of the sick relative Evie’s with, the saintly deed she’s performing through her presence. Maybe Annalise is relaxed because the lying is so good, so real.
    The police found the station wagon a few hours away, unlocked and out of gas, Quinn’s baseball mitt stuffed under the back seat, three of Annalise’s Barbie dolls in the trunk.
    The keys still in the ignition.
    Where is she? What is she thinking?
    This is day five of the disappearance, day five of no sleep, of worrying that possibility is shaping itself into reality. Quinn has no one to give him hope or stories. His father wanders through the house, Evie’s favorite blue sweater wrapped around his left arm, touching everything she’s touched—pale pink lipstick, toothbrush, White Shoulders perfume, vacuum cleaner, potato peeler—around and around, picking up, putting down. Quinn caught him in the hamper last night, face pressed to one of her T-shirts.
    She has to come back. The certainty Quinn felt that first night dwindles with the hours, turns to desperate hope as time stretches with no word and then the car with the keys in the ignition shows up, leaving him cold, panicked. What if someone has taken her, harmed her, killedher? Visions of his mother’s body, bloody and dismembered, pound against his brain, awake and half-sleep, until they are always there,