Back at the shop, a small envelope waited on the counter.
Hank nodded toward it.
“Birthday kid.”
I opened it.
The front showed a mermaid riding a dolphin through a rainbow that appeared to have suffered structural failure.
Inside, Lexi had written:
THANK YOU QUEEN OF THE SURFACE
Beneath that:
YOU CAN COME NEXT YEAR TOO
She had drawn Annie wearing the plastic tiara.
I stood there longer than the card required.
“She was good with them,” Hank said.
“Yes.”
“You sending it to her?”
“I haven’t decided.”
Hank drank his coffee.
It was his fourth cup.
Possibly the same coffee reheated until it qualified as an independent organism.
“You don’t need to decide today.”
“I’m starting to dislike that sentence.”
“Useful sentence.”
“Still dislike it.”
I slipped the card into my bag.
Not sending it.
Not throwing it away.
Storage was the current limit of my emotional ambition.
At lunchtime, I walked to Rosa’s café.
The chalkboard outside read:
TODAY’S SPECIAL
TURTLE GOVERNMENT TOAST
