Tomorrow, I’ll find out if that’s true.
TWELVE
LEVI
I’m at Twin Waves Brewing by 6:47.
Not because I’m anxious. I’m just...early. Punctual. A responsible adult who respects other people’s time.
Michelle doesn’t buy it for a second.
“You’ve been here for thirteen minutes,” she says, refilling my coffee for the third time. “And you’ve checked the door approximately sixty times.”
“I haven’t been counting.”
“I have. It’s slow this morning.” She sets down the pot and leans against the counter. “She texted you last night. Jo told me.”
“Does everyone in this town share information like it’s oxygen?”
“Pretty much.” Michelle grins. “Eleanor’s back early. That’s interesting.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Eleanor Smart doesn’t do anything without a reason. If she cut her Florida trip short?—”
The bell above the door chimes.
Delilah walks in carrying a weathered metal box.
She looks exhausted. Hair in a loose braid, shadows under her eyes, wearing an oversized cardigan that makes her look soft and tired and beautiful. She spots me immediately, and something flickers across her face.
Fear. Hope. Determination.
She’s terrified.
That makes two of us.
Michelle evaporates like she was never there—the woman has a gift for strategic disappearance—and then Delilah is sliding into the booth across from me, setting the box on the table between us like a barrier. Or an offering. I can’t tell which.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey.”
She wraps her hands around the chai latte Michelle must have made while I wasn’t looking. “Thanks for meeting me.”
“You said you had somethingto show me.”
“I do.” She stares at the box. Takes a breath. “Do you remember the summer we were seventeen? The night before I left?”
How could I forget? That night lives in my bones. The pecan tree in her mom’s backyard. The stars through the branches. The way she cried when she said goodbye, like leaving was physically hurting her.
“I remember.”
“We buried a time capsule. Under the tree.”
The memory surfaces—dirt under my fingernails, a metal box, promises written on paper and sealed with teenage certainty. I’d forgotten.
“We were going to dig it up when we turned thirty,” I say slowly.
