Chapter 1
“Ma’am? The room’s full.” Doug, one of the delivery guys, wiped his sweaty face.
His crew milled around the house, waiting for direction from their boss.
I stood like a penned horse by the laundry room in my galley kitchen.
What am I thinking, letting strangers in the house when Noah isn’t here? Get this over with.
“Yes?” I finally replied. “Is there a problem?”
He rolled his shoulders and looked around. “We packed the room to the ceiling, just like you wanted. But we have three boxes that won’t fit. You have any preference where we put them?”
I swiveled my wrist, causing the charms on my bracelet to clink against each other.
Noah will kill me if he sees those boxes.
“Ma’am?” he pressed.
I drew in a sharp breath. “Are you sure you can’t squeeze them in there? Perhaps if you rearrange a few things?—”
“You couldn’t squeeze a mousetrap in that room.” He glanced at his watch. “We’re on a tightschedule.”
“Oh. Um…”
“We’ll leave them by the door. Here. I need you to sign this, and we’ll be on our way.”
I stepped forward to take the clipboard and, without reading anything, signed on the dotted line. Then I extracted money from my dress pocket and tucked it beneath the metal clip. “Keep the change. Thank you for your hard work.”
He scoffed. “What the hell do you have in those boxes? Bricks?”
“It’s above my pay grade.”
The man belted out a laugh and then pointed at a jar of suckers. “Do you mind?”
“Help yourself.”
After pulling out three, he turned to the door and said, “Have a nice day.”
His two coworkers had already gone outside and were closing up the delivery truck.
Once I shut the front door, relief washed over me. Living out in the country made it increasingly challenging to socialize. I had always been a shy girl with introverted tendencies, particularly around strangers, but living in isolation had exacerbated it. Because the surrounding territories were mostly owned by wolves and other predators, I never strayed or shifted alone.
I thought about the delivery guy shaking his head and laughing.
Did he get my joke? Was he laughing at me, or did he think it was a ridiculous response to his question?
One annoying aspect of my shyness was spending an inordinate amount of time parsing over every word after the fact. Sometimes I had trouble reading people.
Next time, Cecilia, just pay the man and show him to the door. A conversationalist you are not.
I shoved my thoughts away as I entered the living room.Noah and I lived in an apartment-sized home. Two bedrooms flanked the recessed dining room at the back of the house. Quaint didn’t begin to describe it. We didn’t have a television, just an old brown sofa and recliner. The sofa faced the front window and was an enjoyable place to snooze with a romance book on a lazy afternoon. Just behind it was the door to the spare bedroom, and a bookshelf that served as my primary source of entertainment.
Noah didn’t understand my adoration for literature. In books, I experienced adventure, love, and mystery. I could transport myself from an empty house to the big city or a different century. My father once told me that books have the power to heal.
I cracked the door and peered inside the spare bedroom. My stomach flip-flopped all the way to South America when I saw numerous boxes stacked to the ceiling. The room smelled like cardboard, old paper, and the musk of three sweaty deliverymen. In order to access the room, I’d have to pull everything out.
Maybe he won’t notice.
