She hangs up.
I set the phone down in its cradle with a plastic click.
Through the kitchen window, I see Oz on the back step.
He’s watching me. His face, the smooth concave plane of it, is turned toward the glass, and the glow along his edges has gone still, muted to a quiet indigo.
He can read my body through walls.
He felt Mrs. Pritchett’s attention pattern through the siding this morning.
He knows what my shoulder muscles do before I reach for something.
He knows something just changed.
The gold in his surface flashes once, a question, and goes dim.
Three days.
Maybe four.
I have never kept a secret from Gram.
Not the credit card debt, not Kyle.
She knows all of it.
She’s the person I tell everything to.
So what do I tell her about the monster who’s slowly teaching himself the shape of my life?
I stand in the kitchen with the phone in its cradle and my hand at my side and look at Oz through the window, and I have no idea what I’m going to do.
Chapter 13
The Casserole Network
Oz
The next morning,Maisie comes into the kitchen dressed for a trip to town. Hair pulled back, work boots, the canvas jacket with the fraying cuff she keeps meaning to fix.
She pours coffee into a thermos and stands at the counter. “I need to get more labels printed,” she says tothe room.
I’m in the hallway, compressed low and dim, giving her space to move.
“And I want to check if Crawford’s got the jojoba shipment in early. I called last week but Danny just said ‘probably’ and hung up.”
“Danny,” I say.
“Crawford’s kid. Seventeen. Treats the phone like it might bite him if he holds it for longer than twenty seconds.”
Maisie’s shoulders are tight again, the left one riding higher than the right.
Three days since the call about her grandmother.
She hasn’t brought it up, and I haven’t asked.
“Back by noon,” she says, pulling her keys from the hook by the door and pausing with her hand on the knob. “Remember to stay away from the windows,” she says. “And if Mrs. Pritchett comes knocking, you’re wallpaper.”
