No Safe Secret by Fern Michaels

happen, but nothing said she could not live nearby and dream, did it?
    In the beginning, she planned on getting some kind of menial job, save her money, and sleep in her car. If she didn’t like the town or the job, she would move on. With this sketchy plan in mind, she pulled onto Main Street and headed for the interstate.
    Wednesday-morning traffic on State Road 25 was minimal. She’d filled the Mustang up in Brunswick, then grabbed a large black coffee and two blueberry muffins in a cellophane package. She munched on one as she drove along at a safe speed of fifty miles per hour. If she’d expected these to taste like the muffins at the hotel—which she hadn’t, but if she had—she would have been greatly disappointed. These tasted like the cellophane in which they were wrapped. Still, she ate the second one, too. Not because she was particularly hungry but because she wasn’t wasteful.
    She remembered what hunger was like.
    Driving down the long stretch of open road, memories of her life in Blossom City came to her in flashes, like random bits from a movie reel. It seemed she had always been hungry. Maddy recalled the gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach the times when it had been empty, the many times when even a cracker would have sufficed. How a mother could allow her child to suffer like that, she still hadn’t figured out. But one thing she did know: when and if she ever had a child, she vowed to be the best mother she could be.
    She’d been driving for a few hours when she made a quick stop in Florence, South Carolina. She liked the name, but still, it wasn’t far enough. She filled her gas tank, bought a soda and a pack of peanut-butter crackers, then returned to I-95.
    She cruised along, staying in the right-hand lane, carefully following all the traffic laws. Again, her thoughts returned to Blossom City and her sad life there.
    She recalled a time years ago—she had to have been around eleven or twelve—when her mother had decided to take her and Marcus to Texas, telling them she had come into a large inheritance. Florida to Texas had been a long, boring car ride, she recalled. Her mother stopped only when they needed to gas up or use the restroom, but that was it. Not once had they stopped for a meal. Not even a quick stop at a fast-food restaurant. Maddy remembered being so hungry she’d rummaged through her mother’s purse when she’d been given instructions to keep her eye on it while her mother went to the restroom. Her mother’s purse was always off-limits to her. If her mother had caught her even looking at her purse, there would have been hell to pay. She never knew why, maybe she’d been hiding drugs or something equally bad, but she knew she’d be in a heap of trouble if her mother caught her rummaging through her purse.
    She’d looked in the front seat to make sure Marcus was still slumped against the passenger door sleeping. He was. Drool dangled from his chin, and his mouth hung open like a door. He was out like a light. Quickly, she crammed her hand inside her mother’s purse, using her fingers to feel around for the loose change her mother always tossed in her purse when she was in a hurry, which seemed like most of the time on this trip. She scooped up a handful of change and quickly sneaked inside the service station, where she saw a vending machine. She dropped thirty-five cents in and pulled on a knobbed handle. A package of Chuckles dropped to the bottom, and she grabbed it and hurried back to the car before her mother returned. She’d tucked the candies inside her shorts. Her heart was beating so loudly, she was sure her mother would hear it when she returned, but she’d ignored her as usual, grabbed a cigarette from her purse, and continued their long drive to Texas.
    Years later she would learn that her mother, Lenore, which is what she preferred Maddy to call her, had learned that her own mother,