Momma folded her lips, but I heard what she would not say. Trusting me was what got us here.
“I’ll be fine,” I said. Less a lie, this time, than a promise.
Eventually, she let herself be persuaded. I watched them go, sorry to be the cause of another disagreement. Yet there was something absurdly comforting about watching them leave together, my father’s hand at the small of my mother’s back.
My phone vibrated on the hospital tray table. Jo, again, or Colt. I let it go to voice mail, touching my distended stomach tentatively under the covers. I felt bloated. Gross.
I took a deep breath. It would take time, the dietician had warned, for my body and my brain to adjust to being fed. My thoughts jerked and rattled like a carnival ride. Obviously, I would never get to sleep.
I woke gradually, roused by a change in the air, a smell, a sound, an awareness. Someone was in the room with me. Not an aide, I saw when I opened my eyes.
Dan was sitting in the hard plastic chair by the window, his ball cap pulled low over his forehead.
My heart lightened. “Hey.”
“Hi.”
Through the blinds behind him, the setting sun streaked the sky. Visiting hours must almost be over. “How long have you been here?” I asked shyly.
He rubbed his beard with his knuckles. “Awhile, I reckon. I didn’t want to wake you.”
He’d watched me sleep. Which could have been creepy. But instead, it felt... sweet. “You make a very good guardian angel,” I assured him.
It was his turn to flush. He ducked his head, fishing around in the bag at his feet. “Brought you something.”
I smiled. “I don’t need anything.” My room was full of flowers and balloons, magazines and books. A ridiculous outpouring for a two-dayhospital stay. My sisters, denied the chance to visit, had overcompensated. Colt had sent fifty long-stemmed red roses with a card,To my angel. I wondered if he were recording without me. If Mercedes were singing my song. “I have too much to carry down to the car already,” I said.
“I’ll take this back with me,” Dan said. “Probably breaking enough rules as it is.”
He found whatever he was reaching for and set it on my bed.
A kitten. One of the calico kittens from the barn. It teetered toward me, its pink toes gripping the blanket, its tail as upright as an exclamation point.
I reached out an unsteady hand. The kitten flinched and then curled around my fingers. I scooped it up, its fur against my cheek, breathing in its lovely, musty baby smell, milk and pee and hay.
Tears flooded my eyes. “But how did you... Why did you...”
When I looked up, Dan was smiling. “They missed you,” he said simply. “I couldn’t bring them all.”
My smile wobbled into existence.
“I’ll be fine,” I’d promised Momma. I don’t know if she believed me.
But this time, I thought it might even be true.
CHAPTER 27
Amy
Sisters’ Night Out,” Meg said contentedly as we settled into our booth at The Taproom. “We should have done this before.”
“We have,” Jo said.
“Not all of us. Beth and I were always too young,” I said.
“Or too far away,” Beth said.
“Well, it’s nice.” Meg smiled across the table at Beth. “Good idea.”
