A six-year-old. My six-year-old. Asked my tenant if she was my girlfriend. At a school event. In front of other parents. While I was standing twenty feet away, completely unaware that this was happening, talking to a man named Todd.
This is fine. Everything is fine.
"What did she say?"
"Nothing. She got really quiet. Then she helped me find a T-Rex tooth."
I grip the steering wheel hard enough to make my knuckles go white. Neither of us speaks for the rest of the drive.
We pull in and kill the engine. Clarence is sitting on Gemma's doorstep. Waiting. Like he knew we were coming.
Gemma's car is still gone. But the cat sits there like a sentry.
Where is she? She left before we did. Is she meeting someone? It occurs to me, not for the first time, that I have no idea if she's seeing anyone. No idea why that thought lands the way it does.
I catch myself. Stop. She's my tenant. What she does, where she goes---none of my business. She pays rent. That's the extent of our arrangement.
By the time I've come around to Ivy's side, she's already working on her own buckles with the fierce concentration of someone determined to do it herself.
She looks at Clarence, then at me, then back at Clarence.
"Even Clarence knows you like each other," she announces. "He's VERY smart."
I carry her stegosaurus project toward the house without answering.
Because what the hell am I supposed to say to that?
Chapter 8
Gemma
My hands are white-knuckled on the steering wheel of my Honda Civic as I pull out of the school parking lot.
The Girlfriend Question plays on loop in my head. Ivy's voice, sweet and curious, asking me at the fossil dig between the brachiosaurus and the triceratops if I'm her daddy's girlfriend. The way I froze. The way I said absolutely nothing and just helped her find a T-Rex tooth instead.
I don't even remember saying goodbye. Just walking to my car, covered in glitter and mortification, and driving away.
Now I'm driving aimlessly. The turn for home comes up on my right.
I drive right past it.
What would I even say to Beck? How do I face him after his daughter asked me that question and I just... stood there? He's probably loading Ivy into his truck right now, listening to her tell him all about asking me if I'm his girlfriend, and the last thing he needs is his awkward tenant showing up and making everything weird.
Weirder. Making everything weirder.
The road climbs into the mountains. Copper Ridge spreads out below me, all distant lights and tree-covered slopes. TheOverlook parking lot is empty when I arrive---just me and the view and way too many thoughts.
I kill the engine. The sudden silence is complete up here --- no traffic, no voices, nothing but the tick of the cooling engine and the faint sound of wind moving through the pines. Cold seeps through the car door against my arm. Through the windshield, the mountains rise on either side with their peaks still holding winter snow, and at the bottom of the valley, a lake catches the fading light, all silver and glass. This is the kind of place that makes you believe in things like permanence and staying put.
My phone sits in the cup holder. I should go home. But going home means facing Beck. And probably Clarence, who shows up at my door every morning and evening like he's punching a time clock. I haven't bought cat supplies yet because that would mean admitting he's mine. That I'm staying.
I can't stay. I never stay.
Instead, I pull up the station schedule on my phone and text dispatch.
Me: Any chance someone needs an extra hand on evening shift?
Three dots appear immediately.
