You Can't Hide by Theresa Sneed (uplifting novels TXT) 📕

She stood in front of the golf cart. “I’ll give it a try.” The lodge was at least ten minutes away by foot, but the day was warm, and a nice breeze blew, so she opted to walk. Anyhow, it’d give her plenty of time to turn back, if she just couldn’t do it—face a total stranger and talk about herself. The group thing was out of the question. She shuddered just thinking about it.

Walking was something she enjoyed. After her captivity in the underground cave, she had ventured out at first only with her brother at her side, but in Ireland, that all changed. Mimi and she walked a couple times a week.

Strange though, even though she felt close to her, she hadn’t told Mimi anything about who she really was, or the terrible ordeal she’d been through.

The therapist, however, knew everything. She was specially appointed by the Feds to counsel both her and Elle, though Elle had declined it. The therapist was the one that suggested the women’s sanctuary. Nancy resisted the idea at first, but, she sighed, here she was. She reached the lodge, and then passed right by it, without nary a look, as if it had always been her plan to keep going.

Though she felt relief, inwardly, she berated herself. You’re such an idiot, Nancy. I don’t know what’s worse—not stopping, or pretending not to stop. Who are you kidding? She shook her head. She walked on, all the while trying to convince herself to turn around.

“Why did I even come here? Gah.” Throwing her hands to her sides, she stopped walking and yelled, “You’re such an idiot.” Movement on a path to her left caught her eye.

She turned and saw the backside of someone rushing into the woods, only making out her pastel shirt, and dark, braided hair, as she slipped into the trees.

Conflicted, and certain the woman had heard her outrageous tirade, she called out, “Wait!” Though explaining her outburst to that woman was the last thing she wanted. She hurried after her, but the woman was gone, blending in with the trees and high brush and ferns.

“Someone doesn’t want to be seen even more than me,” she mumbled, turning back toward her cottage.

Once inside, she went straight to the back wall and opened it. Unnerved by the woman’s strange behavior, she sank into a chair facing the lake. She stayed there for several minutes, unable to settle the confusion flitting around in her brain.

I don’t come across like her, do I? It was a thought that deeply troubled her. Then again, the woman’s odd actions weren’t about her—they were about whatever had happened to the woman to make her so evasive and apparently afraid of people.

Was this place a looney-bin? Shake that off, Nance, she thought. You’re not looney and look what you just did. She smirked. Or maybe looney is what looney does. She slapped her knees. “Okay, Nance, that’s enough.” Jumping up, she continued. “Snap out of it.”

She stepped to the edge of the deck and leaned against the railing. “Beautiful,” she said, scanning the deep, blue water, shimmering in the late afternoon sun.

From down the shore, the woman she had seen earlier, walked from tree to tree, unaware she was being watched. Nancy slipped behind a tree next to the deck and stayed out of view.

She had only seen her backside before, but now she saw her face—untroubled and carefree. It puzzled her. She had half expected to see some kind of turmoil. She actually looked rather pleasant. She appeared to be about her age, and Nancy guessed European—maybe from Spain? Suddenly, she felt silly. She had no right to invade this woman’s privacy, even if the woman knew nothing of it.

Turning away, she slunk down and sat on the deck, facing her blue cabin. Pulling her legs up, she wrapped her arms around them. From a distance she heard the woman’s lyrical voice drifting up through the trees. The song was beautiful, moving, and even though Nancy didn’t understand the foreign words, she sensed the woman’s passion for them.

For no other reason than that, tears formed in the rims of her eyes. It had been a while since she cried—in fact, it was one of the things the doctor encouraged her to do more often. She sat still on the deck and allowed tears to flow that normally she would have stopped.

The woman’s voice got farther away, and Nancy stood up and brushed herself off. She turned and saw the woman ascend the steps to the deck of the yellow cabin.

The woman who lives there will never let you in, Nancy thought, but when the woman got to the deck, she sat down, and picked up a book. Could it be? Nancy squinted. She’d never seen the woman in the yellow cottage up close, and certainly never seen her wild, unkempt hair neatly pulled back in a braid.

The woman laid the book down. Her dark braid fell over her shoulder as she bent down and picked up a lap desk setting on the deck floor. With pencil in hand, she appeared to be caught up in whatever it was she wrote, every once in a while, looking out at the lake and then back at her paper.

From the green cottage between them, Millie stepped out on her deck. She looked at the woman, who paid no attention to her, and then up at Nancy. Waving eagerly, she beckoned for her to come down to her cottage.

Nancy’s muscles tightened, and she squeezed her fists tight, not wanting to go, and wanting to go, at the same time. Why was making friends so difficult? Uh, probably the fiasco which was my life with Merrick, she thought bitterly. She glanced at the safety of her blue cabin and then back at Millie’s. If I stay away from people, I won’t be hurt by them. There. She thought it, and it was why she forced herself to leave the deck, and