CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Later that morning, I pulled out my phone after finally downing a couple slices of toast and Jif.
I couldn’t shake the uneasiness over the way Del and I had left things.
Before the lake episode, she was trying to be a friend, and in my own convoluted way, I was trying to let her.
But now I feared too much had changed between us, and it would be up to me to reach out this time.
With lingering questions about her vision trapped inside my head, I sent a text to the only phone that my phone seemed to acknowledge.
Me: Hey, this is me asking about your offer for a horseback riding tour at your family’s place. Also, is your stomach ok after, you know . . .
Unless Penn appeared and had other ideas to celebrate. In Sacred. In South Dakota. On the moon. I wanted to go wherever he was.
But he didn’t come. The watch practically side-eyed me for stalking the champagne dial, the still and dormant second hand. Or was that my face in the glassy reflection?
But he didn’t, wouldn’t, appear . . . Couldn’t?
TUESDAY, 8:37 a.m.
Me: Please answer, just so I know you’re ok? Anne
Shirley says hi and she’s sorry for hissing at you
TUESDAY, 3:15 p.m.
Me: Did I do something?
Me to the frozen watch face:
Did I do something?
TUESDAY, 8:43 p.m.
Del: Thursday, 10 a.m., Sacred and True Stables
A rare thing around this place, hearing my phone buzz. I didn’t respond, just marked the date in my mental calendar and circled my index finger along Anne Shirley’s water-balloon belly. Outside, Tía Viv worked her band saw. (I made sure she came inside by midnight now.)
In the silence of the still watch, my mind went back to Penn.
“I don’t like this,” I admitted to the purring, orphaned creature. “That couldn’t have been . . . it, right? I’d know if that was the end, at the lake. That he had passed on?” Fear gripped the base of my stomach.
Anne Shirley answered with a lick, then moved onto the other paw.
A short time later, the cat gave an indifferent stretch. When she’d worked herself into a ginger piece of saltwater taffy, she curled into my side and dragged a paw across my left arm.
My eyes followed.
Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick . . .
It was the first good breath I pulled into the pit of my lungs in days.
When I wound the crown exactly three times, Penn appeared. He blinked himself into my room that needed organizing and was dusted with cat hair. And I just went.
“Were you trying to prove your own mantra that things could truly be worse?”