She hugs me with a heavy, begrudging sigh. “I know you can’t see how you’re hurting us right now. Go. Go with love and know you can always come back home. Arnie will be here, and I’m just a call away.” She pushes me back with a little half-sob and runs back into the house to comfort her distraught husband, the doctor.
I mean, the actor.
IT’S NOT GOOD TO CRYwhile driving. Even my audiobook filled with cozy cottage core witches and friendly fae folk battling to save their wooded glen from the “darkness” doesn’t distract me.I relate, Witch Glenna. I feel you, Fae farmers and woodsmen. I’m fighting to save my home from the darkness, too.
I sob and hiccup softly for two hours straight. Not even talking to June and Dad helps me stop.
“Hey. Hey, listen. Do you know what this is?” Dad’s voice crackles heavily from the remote satellite phone he uses to stay in touch.
“Mom choosing Arnie over me? Again?” I whimper. “I should never have left Texas. I should have stayed with you guys and gone to Texas A&M!”
“Sweetie, you did a great job getting your degree, and you would have done that anywhere. SUNY was close to your mom, and that was a great opportunity to reconnect with her. You can’t control how people treat you. No, this? This is a milestone. This is your first time living alone, in your own place. Can you get a cat?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And paint?”
“I don’t want to paint.”
“Well, you can decorate in your own style. No more Mom’s rules. No more dorm rules. Not even my rules. You can take your Longhorns poster off the wall, and you don’t have to have your Texans’ bobbleheads on your bookshelf.”
I laugh for the first time in days. I can picture the aggrieved expression on my father’s face as he says that. “June, make sure they don’t revoke his Texan card for saying that.”
“I’m monitoring his heart rate right now, sweetie. We’re sending you fifty bucks. You go get yourself something beautiful. Something in just your style. Happy housewarming, Ags.”
My phone pings, and my e-pay app shows that June Habersett sent me fifty dollars. Fifty dollars is like five hundred dollars to my parents and the people they help. I won’t argue with them, but I’ll be sending forty back. I used to go thrifting with June at the big permanent flea market in town. I wonder if there’s anything like that in Pine Ridge?
“I’m gonna go thrifting,” I say firmly. Maybe hit some yard sales. Summer is the perfect time for yard sales,” I say. I realize my hiccups have stopped. My eyes are red, but they’re not leaking.
“Are you sure you have enough? First and last month’s rent? Money for all those things you forgot, like a vacuum cleaner, trash bags, and a plunger?” My practical father asks.
That’s one thing about living with my mom and Arnie for the past three years. I have worked off and on (and not just at three jobs, at like six!). I had plenty saved up—but I know it’s not enough to live on indefinitely. “I have enough saved up to get started, and I have a job lined up.”
“You know our house is on a long-term lease to one of the families in our church, but if you need to move home, we can tell them they need to get out sooner than January.”
“No! No, don’t do that. Well, not yet. Let’s just see. Pine Ridge might be just what I need.”
Chapter Two
Alban and Alain Wymark operate a law firm in a quaint-looking red brick building in the heart of Pine Ridge’s downtown—which is also its uptown. They have the ground floor, with big picture windows and gold lettering, but the interior is covered by lots of plants and blinds, I guess so people can’t peek in and see who is getting their will remade or something like that.
Law and Order, this ain’t. June and July don’t have a single court case lined up, just lots of appointments about estates, wills, business contracts, property liens, and that sort of thing. I basically learn the computer system, take calls, make appointments, and run out to pick up lunch and coffee at The Pine Loft, the coffee shop down the block.
I’m a fancy receptionist. They order lunch and coffee for me, too, and never ask me to chip in. They say it’s part of the job. That teams who work together, eat together. Their wives come in and meet me and bring me a potted geranium for my desk, and Alban’s twins stop over after pre-school sometimes.
