That’s anI’m on the hunt, and I can smell youhowl.
“And we’re done,” Flint says.
I’ve barely registered the click of his pocketknife snapping open before I’m free.
“Where’s your car?” he asks.
“Oh my God, myhair,” I gasp.
“Mom.”Junie grabs my hand. “The truck.Where’s the truck?”
Flint grabs me by the shoulders, turns me toward the main drag, where streetlamps are flickering on just a bit away, and shoves. “Turn on your flashlights, and be as big as you can be.”
“Are wolves going to eat us?” Junie asks.
“Probably not.Be big, Maisey.”
My hair.
My hair.
And also—“I’ll offer myself first, baby,” I tell Junie while I stumble in the darkness, one hand grasping for hers, the other testing the spiky hair on the side of my head while I tell myself the lie that if the wolves eat me today, Junie will know to put me in a good wig for my viewing.
Won’t she? Crap. I need to tell her. But probably not before I’ve patched up our relationship a little more.
Are those wolves?
Or coyotes?
And does it matter? “When they attack me, you run, and know that I love you.”
Flint snorts.
Junie sighs.
And then we’re back in civilization, which wasn’t that far away, with raucous laughter spilling out from Iron Moose just down the street.
“There’s my truck,” I blurt. I have to get in my truck. Get Junie safe from the wolves. And then I’m taking us both home, where I can park in the garage and shut the door before we get out and then find out what my hair looks like.
And then also deal with the mess that I left all over the house as I was cleaning out the last of Uncle Tony’s belongings from the room that the estate sale people left them in before our moving truck arrives tomorrow.
I am so ridiculous.
And this was a terrible idea.
All of it.
Dinner. The park.
Moving Junie somewhere with predators who like to eat womenwho have done their researchand can theoretically but not actually handle wildlife.
“Thank you for our dinner,” Junie says stiffly to Flint.
He grunts out a “welcome,” and then I’m hustling my daughter to safety.
We get buckled in, her holding our dinners in her lap, and when I’m sure the windows are rolled up, I turn to face her. “I’m so sorry I was too late in getting us here for you to try out for soccer. I’ll make this up to you.”
She snorts.
