Chapter One

Chapter One


Welcome to Kansas, Land of Ah's!


Though Geena Pangborn was just sixty-two miles from Barry and his family, crossing this invisible line felt like shutting and locking a door behind her. As she sensed her anxiety ebbing, Geena released a deep breath and finally popped open the forgotten can of Diet Cherry Coke that had been warming between her thighs for the last hour.

She scanned the flat landscape. Western Kansas really looked just like eastern Colorado, less hilly but still brown and crispy, field upon field of the freeze-dried remnants of last summer's corn and wheat crops. When there was a light dusting of snow on the ground, as there was now, it reminded her of breakfast cereal awash in milk.

There was not a tree to be found, save the occasional grayed, sun-bleached exoskeleton of an elm near a dry creek bed that had surrendered long ago to the bitter winds and drought of the High Plains. Born and raised in the anonymity of an apartment complex in one of Denver's older, leafy neighborhoods, Geena had really never grown accustomed to this feeling of being exposed and vulnerable. It was unnatural to not have trees and water on the surface. There was no place to hide. Why were humans the only large mammals dense enough to call this terrain home?

In her years with Barry, Geena had tried to quell this vastness; she'd planted a birch, two maples, three blue spruce, a line of poplars along the fence. All but two of them died. From her favorite vantage point of the kitchen sink, looking into the backyard, it had been hard not to run an ongoing tally of mortality.

Geena now looked over at the Rand McNally road atlas spread open