This isn't weird.

Leaf on the Wind

The memories began in Wyoming. 

The horror of discovering that a tracking device had been planted in her car, most likely for years, had snapped Millie back into a state of unwelcome lucidity, and she didn't like it one bit. It forced her to take stock of her location, where she had been and where she was going. As it turned out, she was going somewhere. Random and mindless though her choices may have felt up to that point, it was obvious that she'd been unconsciously making a beeline northwest, straight toward Oregon. Straight toward Ben.

You could be there in two days, said a little voice inside her head.

It wasn't too late. It had only been a couple days. He still loved her. He would forgive her. Maybe all her feelings of self-disgust and violation would fall away once she was in his arms. Maybe his hands on her body could make her feel clean again.

And then what?

They live happily ever after, until her next nervous fucking breakdown?

Was he supposed to just live the rest of his life in fear of her next episode, walking on eggshells, waiting to discover what new mundane bullshit would turn out to be her next trigger? The mental image was so tragic, she had to laugh.

"Welcome to psycho girlfriend roulette! What'll it be this time, folks?" she said to herself with the sort of campy, vaudevillian affectation that would have sent Ben into hysterics. "A humiliating public panic attack, or a terrifying private one? Compulsive vomiting? Violent nightmares? Oh! How about a catatonic fugue state? A few hazy years of good old-fashioned drug abuse? Or maybe that old fan favorite—she'll just fucking leave! Step right up, place your bets!" She gasped. "Oooh, and just for added spice, why don't we sprinkle in a little sanctimonious preaching about codependency and self-respect or whatever 'I just started therapy' buzzwords are en vogue this season!"

Fuck no.

They weren't doing that.

Ben was a good man, a whole person with a full heart. He'd already wasted months of his life in a spiral of despair, drinking himself into oblivion, giving up on his job, his friends, himself, all because of the cold, selfish way she had treated him. And he'd never give up on her, never stop letting her break his heart, if she didn't fuck off once and for all. She'd already sent the letter to Indigo. He would have received it by now, broken the news to Ben that she wasn't coming back, crushed his hopes yet again. It was done. She had to let him grieve and heal and move on.

After a convoluted excursion into a remote cornfield to ditch the tracking device (enjoy your fucking drive, Tess), Millie corrected course, dipping south, and made it a few hours into Utah before her fucking car exploded.

Okay, so it didn't explode. It just seized and gurgled and groaned and did a little heavy smoking before it died suddenly on the side of the road (the best death any of us can hope for, really), but it certainly blew up any semblance of a plan she'd had for the future.

For what must have been the better part of an hour, she just sat there, numb and silent. Then she began to laugh. It was all so fucking futile. What was she going to do, call for a tow? She didn't even have a phone, and what was the point, anyway? Millie didn't know much about cars, but she knew enough to be pretty damn sure that this one was dead-dead. At best, she might make a paltry sum selling it for scrap. And that mental image—greasy mechanics dissecting her car, hollowing it out for parts—was what finally set off the tears.

She loved that car. It was the first car she'd ever driven that had been really hers, legally hers, titled in her name, paid for with her own money. Not just a vehicle, but a symbol of stability and growth, of having gotten her life back on track enough to have a job and savings and a goddamn credit score. It was old and beaten up and ugly, but it was her baby, and it was an innocent in all of this. They would have remained together for years to come if she had only properly taken care of it, the way it deserved. She had failed it, the way she failed everything, and everybody—