“Wanna go to town for lunch?”
He scoffed. “I went into town yesterday, Archer.” He turned around and leaned on the counter, shoveling the last of the apple strudel into his mouth.
“That’s not lunch.” I often had to bring plates to the office when he didn’t come out for a meal. I was the mother none of us had. Weird, but true.
“It’s kind of lunch.”
“We could pick Dallas up and get burgers.”
Justice loved burgers. It was the most normal thing about him. Burgers. Fries. Chocolate milkshakes. Tons of ketchup.
The first meal we had together after Justice and Dallas picked me up from the group home on my eighteenth birthday.
“Or, we could hit up that new Chinese buffet. It opened this week.”
“That sounds even better. I need to shower and change.”
Justice nodded. “Same. Meet back in ten minutes.”
The shower was quick, but I got the dirt out from under my fingernails. When I came down, Justice was already waiting by the front door, keys in hand.
We were silent for most of the ride. Not a surprise. Justice only spoke if there was something to say, and I was used to that, but there were days when I wanted to have a conversation with someone other than the chickens and goats.
It took an hour or so to get to the shop. There were no cars parked out front, but that didn’t mean anything. First, there were only a few spaces and, second, most people parked on main street and then walked to the different places in town.
Dallas had brought my baked goods in that morning, along with eggs from the regular chickens. I hoped they sold. I knew he worried more than he should about money. Not for us but for our omega.
Wherever she was.
We got out of the truck and, in the distance, I saw a family with their cub. Not a cub but a young human.
As I grew up, I thought the memory of my parents would fade, and some of them did, but peak moments I would never forget came up when I saw others with their kids or at the most random times.
My parents were killed when I was only a toddler, but my most prominent memory was my mother, singing and cooking in the kitchen while I sat on the corner of the counter where I was safe.
I tore my gaze from the family and refocused on my sleuth.
Chapter Five
Bonnie
I left.
Not forever, not yet, but I needed to take a step in the direction of freedom, and the ad I’d seen for The Coop made me wonder if my hobby might not be a marketable skill. I had no delusions that it might make me wealthy, but I’d learned to live on little from my earliest days, so perhaps my backlog of miniatures might help me to get started.
Once, while exploring the shed behind the cabin, I had found a bicycle tucked away, but after riding it up and down the track by our home often enough to gain confidence, I’d lost interest. Why ride…nowhere? So, I’d shoved it back to the hoarder heaven and forgotten about it. Until now. The Coop lay several miles away, and I had no money of my own for the bus, so the bicycle might provide an alternative.
Especially since it had a basket on the front where I could carry a box of my artworks to show to the owner of the store. If they did not want to buy them from me, they might be persuaded to take them on consignment, an arrangement that could be of benefit to us both. When I rolled the bicycle out, it did not look as good as I recalled. The roof of the shed had collapsed in one corner, admitting rain and leaves and small rodents. My wolf volunteered to eat them, but I didn’t have time for a shift just then. So I pushed the cycle outside and returned into the shed for the pump I thought I’d remembered finding years before. It was buried under the fallen section of shingles, but seemed otherwise in decent shape, so I dragged it out and returned to the bicycle to pump up its flattened tires. Would they hold air for long enough? Anyone’s guess, but I crossed my fingers and set the pump in the basket.
Returning to the cabin, I willed a wooden box with a selection of my miniatures and carried them out to the bicycle, settled them in the basket, and, with a muttered prayer for Fate’s blessings, pedaled down the trail to the road.
I hadn’t left the forest since I could remember, and as I turned right onto the four-lane, my heart beat so hard, I felt as if it might burst. What would it be like to face other people? What if I was just so weird, so different from anyone else because of my isolation that nobody could deal with me?
If I was going to live on my own, I would need to be able to get a job, to shop, and do all the things Marie did but never taught me to do. Online exposure was not the same as pedaling a bike down a road with cars and trucks whizzing past, riding through two towns before reaching the one on my agenda. My old clothes were not fashionable, but I did my best to keep them clean, to wash myself, and brush my hair every day.
I gained confidence as I rode, though. Nobody seemed to be staring or wondering why I was out among the rest of them, and by the time I reached the town that held The Coop, I had a plan in place to speak to the owner and be very professional. I would show them my artworks, ask if they were interested in a collab or a purchase, and see what they said. If it was a no, I would consider an alternative plan.
It felt very strange not to be surrounded by trees, but I rather liked being able to see more than a few yards in any direction. It was freeing, and my spirits lifted. When Marie had been telling me my story, part of me regretted asking. But with the wind in my hair and the world around me, I didn’t feel that way anymore. Twice along the way, I had to stop and pump the tires up again, but I didn’t mind too much.
