Maybe I should call Grandma Morgan and ask her if I can stay with her for a bit.
She decided that was an awesome idea and searched for her phone. She finally found it buried somewhere beneath the tangled mess of clothes in the corner of the room. She pressed the on button, but the screen stayed dark. “Dead, of course you’re dead. Why wouldn’t you be dead when I need to call Grandma Morgan at two thirty in the morning?”
The charger was tangled in the cords behind her nightstand, half-hidden under a stack of dog-eared paperbacks and a half-empty glass of water that had been sitting so long the surface was filmed with dust. She yanked it free, jammed the plug into the wall, and stabbed the charging cable into the phone with a shaking hand.
The screen stayed black for an agonizing few seconds before the display flickered, and the battery icon blinked red at 1%.She pressed the on button again, then, all at once, notifications flooded the lock screen like a flood breaking through a dam. Three missed calls from her mom, the timestamps stretching back over the last two hours. Messages from some of her friends on the circuit, wanting to know how she was doing. Near the bottom, beneath a spam message from her mobile provider, was a reminder from the vet about Rain’s overdue booster, and under that a single line from a number she didn’t have in her contacts, the preview showed on the screen:
Enya, just checking in to see how you are doing. Call me sometime. Rowan.
Her thumb hovered over the message, the pad of her finger pressing just hard enough to make the glass whiten beneath it.
How am I doing?
I’m doing shit because you have my horse.
What else was there to say, anyway?
Sorry, my dad’s a jerk?
Sorry, I couldn’t keep Rain happy?
Sorry, I wasn’t enough?
The phone slipped from her fingers, bouncing once on the mattress before she let it lie there, face-up, the screen still glowing. She turned away, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes until stars bloomed behind her lids.
How did my life turn into this?
Who did I upset in a past life to deserve this?
Her heart ached, her head hurt. She didn’t even know where to start figuring her crap out or even if it was possible at this point.
Getting Rain back would be a start.
You can’t get him back if you don’t know where you’re going.
For the first time in months, she reached for her laptop and opened it to find Rain’s paperwork. She took the address of his breeder and plugged it into a Google search. It didn’t take her long to locate the property and have the computer spit out directions. She plugged them into her phone.
I’m coming, Rain.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Clothes.I’m going to need clothes.
She searched through her closet for something that would fit her. After discarding three pairs of jeans that refused to stay up, she found a pair from about six years ago buried at the bottom of the pile and pulled them on.
I knew I was right to keep you.
She still needed a belt to keep them in place, but it was better than wearing shorts or looking like some kind of free-spirited toddler with a mishmash of clashing colors and patterns. But as she pulled on a hoodie with a book quote splashed across the front, she figured it didn’t matter because nobody would be looking at her.
Once she was dressed, she grabbed her phone and crossed the room to press her ear to the door.
Are they gone to bed?
When her parents were asleep, usually the sound of her father’s snoring rattled through the walls like a chainsaw. But all shecould hear was the hum of the fridge and the distant whir of the washer in the laundry room, as it hit the spin cycle.
The last thing Momma does before she goes to bed is put on the washer.
Enya checked what day it was on her phone.
