“You look like you’re waiting for something to go wrong.”
I stare at my latte.
“Well,” I say carefully, “statistically speaking, that feels like a reasonable position to take.”
Lani doesn’t laugh. “You don’t have to pretend in here.”
I exhale slowly. “I don’t want to become someone who’s scared all the time.”
“Good,” she says.
“I mean it,” I add. “I don’t want to shrink. I don’t want to start avoiding things or… changing everything I do just because something bad happened.”
“Also good.”
“But,” I continue, staring into my coffee like it might offer guidance, “I also don’t know how to not feel like something bad could happen again.”
Lani nods once, like that’s the most reasonable sentence she’s heard all morning. “Both things can be true.”
I glance at her. “That feels like a trick.”
“It’s not,” she replies. “It just means you adjust without disappearing.”
“I don’t like that I flinch now,” I admit quietly. “At stupid things. Doors. Footsteps. It’s… annoying.”
“It’s your brain trying to keep you safe,” she says. “Doesn’t mean it gets to run the whole show.”
“I’d like to fire it, actually.”
“Yeah,” she snorts. “Let me know how that goes.”
I smile a little.
Progress.
“I keep thinking I should know what to do next,” I say after a second. “Like there’s a correct move here and I’m just… missing it.”
Lani picks up a cloth and starts wiping down the counter, not looking at me while she answers. “There isn’t.”
“That feels like false advertising.”
“It’s honest,” she says. “You figure it out as you go. You keep showing up. You pay attention to what feels right and what doesn’t.”
“And if I get it wrong?”
She shrugs. “Then you adjust.”
I lean my chin into my hand. “You’re very calm about this.”
“I’ve lived here a long time,” she replies. “Nothing worth keeping ever comes in clean.”
Lani does make me feel better, but unfortunately, I can’t sit around in the café all day.
I have to organize The Hollow’s Founder’s Day event…
By the time I stop by Granger’s Goods later to pick up tape and string for the Founders Day board, Bill grunts at me from behind the counter and says, “You look less haunted.”
Which is, from Bill Granger, basically the equivalent of a warm hug and a homemade casserole.
