Sitka had put her two pieces of sourdough on a plate, going through the motions she went through every morning. She always put the jam on the left slice of bread first, then the peanut butter on the right. She didn’t press them together like a sandwich, but ate each piece individually.
“Oh, okay,” Sitka said. “So Freya will be with you today?”
“Actually, I was hoping you’d still watch her. I have some things I want to do on The Land.”
Sitka shrugged like she couldn’t care less and said, “Sure, yeah.”
After eating her own breakfast of homemade granola and raw milk, Angeni went to the hall closet and pulled the duffel bag from the back of it. It was heavier than she remembered. Behind the duffel bag was the safe. She spun the dial to unlock it and pulled out a box of ammo. It had been so long since she’d gone shooting.
She heaved the bag over her shoulder and made her way outside via the door in their bedroom. She didn’t want to have to pass by Sitka and Freya and have them ask what she was doing.
“Ang?”
It was Aurora’s voice. Angeni turned to see her coming toward her.
“I was just looking for you,” Aurora said. Her eyes went to the duffel bag. “Do you need help with that?”
It must have been obvious that Angeni was straining a bit under the weight.
“No, thank you. I’m good,” she said.
“Are you going ... shooting?” Aurora asked.
Aurora wasn’t stupid—she still recognized Angeni’s shooting bag after all these years. She’d always thought Angeni’s hobby was strange, and the current tone of her voice revealed that that opinion hadn’t changed.
“Shooting? No. These are just some gardening tools. Was going to see about pulling some weeds in that back corner of The Land.”
The lie came easily. Angeni jutted her chin toward the east end of the property, and Aurora turned to look.
“Oh,” Aurora said, her skepticism still obvious. “Do you want help? Company?”
“No, no. I think it’ll help me clear my head if I’m alone,” Angeni said. “Trying to get in the zone so I can write later.”
“Of course,” Aurora said.
She stayed standing there, though.
“Did you need something?” Angeni asked.
Aurora looked down, started turning her hands over each other. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”
Angeni sighed and set the duffel bag on the ground.
“What is it?”
“I don’t want to upset you, with all you have going on,” Aurora said. “But I feel like it would be wrong not to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
Angeni felt her heart rate accelerate. This was her body in the hypervigilant state it had been in when she was a child. All her healing ... was it coming undone?
“Maybe we should sit,” Aurora said, looking around helplessly for appropriate seats.
Angeni sat atop the duffel bag, and Aurora, seeing no other alternative, sat on the ground across from her.
“What is it? You’re making me nervous,” Angeni said.
She still wasn’t sure that Aurora wasn’t the one who had called into the podcast, making that vague threat by questioning her past. There’d been an awkward distance between them since. She assumed that was what Aurora wanted to discuss.
