Free Everything but the marriage by Dallas Schulze Page B

past year than she'd taken of herself. And they'd both suffered some wear and tear as a result.

    Devlin pulled his truck in behind the car and got out. After a moment, Annalise followed him. She wasn't at all sure she wanted to get any closer to the car. It held so many memories. She'd gone from happily married to single to destitute in that car. For the past few months, she'd lived in it more often than not, sleeping curled awkwardly across the front seats.
    As Annalise reached the rear of the car, Devlin opened the driver's side door and reached in to pull the keys out of the ignition.
    *'I guess I wasn't too worried about anyone stealing it," she said uneasily, though he hadn't, by so much as a look, commented on her carelessness.
    "I guess." The look he ran over the car made it clear that he thought any such worries would have been close to delusional. He slid behind the wheel with some difficulty. The seat was adjusted for legs considerably shorter than his, and his efforts to push it back proved useless.
    Annalise linked her hands together in front of her, watching as he cranked the engine without result. A look under the hood didn't produce any miraculous solution. Devlin lowered the hood and pulled a rag out of his back pocket, wiping his hands as he considered the battered little car.
    "Is it something awful?" Annalise asked at last.
    "I don't know. How long has it been since you had a tune-up done?" Her blank look told him it had been considerably longer than it should have been. "It could just be that it needs points and plugs." He shrugged. "Or it could be one of half a dozen other things."

    "Oh/' There didn't seem to be much she could add to that single word. She didn't need to tell him that she didn't have the money for a tune-up, let alone the half a dozen other things it might require. He hadn't asked about her financial state, but he had known it was nearly nonexistent.
    If Devlin was aware of the blow his words had dealt to her fragile optimism, he didn't show it. He looked up and down the road, frowning in thought.
    "There's no sense in trying to do anything with it here. I brought a tow chain. I'll tow it back to my place."
    Annalise nibbled on her lower lip. She wanted to ask him to just tow it to the nearest service station and she'd deal with it from there. But the truth was, a service station was going to want money even to look at the car. And money was something she had all too little of.
    While Devlin moved the truck around to the front of her car, Annalise opened the passenger door. Her purse was lying on the floor in front of the seat, an open invitation to anyone who'd happened by. On the other hand, the purse wouldn't have been much loss. When Shakespeare wrote that "Who steals my purse steals trash;" he could have been writing for her.
    Even the purse itself wasn't worth stealing. It was cheap brown plastic that had started to crack on the comers, an advertisement that its contents were no more valuable than it was.
    Perched on the edge of the seat, she opened it, examining its contents as if someone might have dropped a wad of one-hundred dollar bills in when she wasn't

    looking. But it was the same pathetic inventory she'd been seeing for months: a lipstick she hadn't used in weeks, a checkbook for an account she no longer had, a pocketknife that had gotten damp and rusted shut, a handful of small change and four tattered dollar bills.
    Her fingers trembled on the edge of a leather photo wallet, its quality a contrast to its surroundings. She hadn't opened the wallet in almost a year. The images it held were just too painful. Not that she'd noticed the pain growing any less for avoiding the photos.
    Suddenly she wanted desperately to open the wallet. What if her manories had grown dim? What if she was no longer remembering clearly? After all, her memories of forty-eight hours ago were blurred. She toyed with the clasp, feeling her pulse speed with something close to fear.
    "I've got