I relaxed a little. If this was about Kitty it was sure to be fine. “Okay.”
“She was talking to Dave,” Eva said.
I was quiet as I thought about that statement. I didn’t doubt Eva had seen Dave talk to Kitty. “He probably cornered her. Dave has tried to get to me through you and Dad before.”
Eva nodded. “I figured. I just… didn’t like it.”
“Kitty wouldn’t push me into something I don’t want,” I told her.
“I know,” Eva said quickly. “I know that. I really like her. I do. I just had a bad feeling, and I didn’t want to keep it to myself.”
“Did she tell you what he said?” I asked.
“No.”
“Then she probably shut him down,” I replied. “She’s busy tonight with the market. I’ll make a point to talk to her later.”
Eva studied my face, then nodded. “I hope so.”
“So do I,” I said.
She smiled faintly and moved toward the door. “I just want you to be happy.”
After she left, the shop felt quieter, even with the market still buzzing outside. As the afternoon wore on, I periodically glanced at my phone. No messages. No missed calls.
I told myself that meant nothing.
I rang up one last customer, flipped the sign to CLOSED, and started locking up. I thought about Kitty, about honesty, about the future that suddenly looked wider instead of narrower.
As I stepped outside, my foot caught on something solid.
I stumbled, caught my balance, and looked down.
A tent.
A full-sized tent. Pitched neatly. Directly in front of my door.
“Surprise,” Glenna said cheerfully, popping her head out of the tent like this was a perfectly reasonable thing to do on a public sidewalk.
I froze, one hand still on the door handle, my other foot half tangled in a guide line that had been driven down by a peg into the space between the sidewalk concrete and the brick of my building. The tent was not small. It was not discreet. It was pitched with confidence, stakes driven cleanly into the narrow strip of ground like she had done this before and learned from experience.
“Glenna,” I said carefully. “What are you doing?”
She beamed. “Camping. I needed a place to stay.”
“You’re… outside my shop.”
“Yes,” she agreed, like that was the point. “I didn’t want to be far from you.”
I looked up and down the street, half expecting someone to step out of the shadows and tell me this was a prank. The vendor market had thinned, but there were still people wandering past with cocoa cups and paper bags, all of them pretending not to stare.
“You can’t stay here,” I tightly mentioned.
“Oh, I’m not staying,” she replied brightly. “I’m just resting. Temporarily.”
“This is not okay,” I told her.
She crawled out of the tent with surprising agility and stood, brushing imaginary dirt from her coat. She had changed shirts. This one also had my face on it, but from a different era, hair longer, smile wider. I felt a specific kind of tiredness settle into my bones.
