“You can kill chickens, but you can’t kill a vole in pain?” Hadley asked her sister between sobs.
“And be labeled the vole assassin of Elk Ridge?” Salem sobbed. “No thanks.”
I couldn’t help it.
I started to laugh.
And laugh and laugh until I couldn’t see straight.
Salem glared at me as she swiped the tears from her cheeks. “Have you ever seen a vole?”
“No,” I said, trying to stem the flow of hysteria and failing miserably.
Hadley whipped out her phone and pulled up a photo of a little brown rodent-looking thing.
“Oh, they’recute,” I said.
Hadley nodded. “And they mate for life.”
Salem started bawling again.
“They mate for life?” I asked.
“Yep,” Hadley replied, teary eyed.
Suddenly, the humor in me fled and my lips began to tremble. And before I knew it, I was crying too.
“Why areyoucrying?” Hadley asked me with a sniff.
“Because that’s so sad!” I liquified into a fit of tears.
“This is nutty,” Salem muttered as she hiccoughed. “I get why Hadley and I are crying. We’re hormonal messes.”
“I’m a crier,” I announced. “We know this about me.”
Salem nodded slowly. “Yes. You are. You cry all the time.”
Hadley clenched the tissues in her hand as she looked at Salem.
Salem glanced at her and then the two of them peered at me.
“What?” I demanded.
“You don’t think you’re . . .” Hadley began.
“Think I’m what?”
“Pregnant,” Salem said. “Is there any chance you could be pregnant?”
I frowned. “No. No chance of that.”
“None?” Hadley pressed. “Are you sure? Have you—ah—been using protection?”
I hid my head. “Not when I was on my period . . .”
Or my first time, but I wasn’t going to admit that.
Hadley’s fingers flew across her phone screen again.
