“Mason’s cabin,” I replied. Pulling out my phone, I showed Emily the address on my screen. “He said I could stay there for as long as I needed.”
Emily snorted again and let out one of her contagious, high-pitched laughs. “Oh, Hope. You can’t be serious. You, out in the woods? Alone?”
I glared at her. “I can handle it.”
“Are you sure? Because last time I took you out to the forest, you ended up driving home in the middle of the night so you could sleep with your own pillow.”
“I get a kinked neck if I don’t use my own pillow,” I muttered, my bottom lip jutting out in a pout. “You grabbed my pillow, right?”
Emily rolled her eyes. “Yes, Princess. Your magical pillow is safely stored in the overhead compartment.”
“Oh, good,” I said, relief flooding me. “Thank you.”
I didn’t particularly want to stay in a cabin in the woods, if I was being honest, but what I did want was to break the dependency I had on my parents. I knew it would take some serious distance to do it. And if this were the only free place available, I would take it.
“What exactly did you tell your brother to get the keys?” Emily asked.
“That I needed a break from scraping plaque and wanted to finish my book.”
Emily snorted again. “And he believed that?”
“Technically, thatisthe truth. I am writing a book. And Mason knows I’ve been working on it.”
I thought back to the call earlier that day, the one that had occurred approximately six hours before my dramatic exit at Sunshine Dentistry.
“Please, Mason. Can I stay in your cabin?”
“I guess so. But, Hope, I haven’t been to that cabin in years. The furnace is probably broken, and there might be some mice that’ve gotten into the walls,” Mason said.
I was so desperate to get a yes that I stamped down my fear of creatures with opal-scaled tails and wiry whiskers.
“I can handle a few rodents.”
Mason sighed, and there was a hesitant pause. “What’s going on? Since when do you like roughing it?”
“I’m feeling inspired, and I need a quiet place to really nail down the second half of my book. Riverside is too noisy.”
“Really? Are you sure this isn’t about what happened a few months ago with Dad’s business partner?”
I stayed silent, not wanting to confirm or deny what had happened with Dr. Pike.
“Look, Mason. Can I stay in the cabin or not?”
I knew he was just trying to look out for me, but I’d been hurt too deeply. No amount of brotherly persuasion was going to convince me not to go through with my plan to quit my job at the clinic later that day.
He sighed. “I guess so. But don’t blame me if you get hantavirus. It’s pretty much abandoned, and there could be all sorts of things living in it.”
“Oh, Mason, thank you.” Relief had flooded my entire body. A way out. That was all I needed.
“You’re welcome. I love you, Hope. Be careful, please.”
“I will, and I love you too, Mason.”
“He doesn’t really know what went down, does he?” Emily said, pulling me back to reality.
I sighed. “Not exactly. Mason knows there was tension at the clinic between Dr. Pike and me, but he doesn’t know all the details.”
My jaw clenched as I stared out the window at the passing traffic, trying not to let my thoughts get too dark.
