Heat pooled low in my belly again. “Good.”
“Good,” he echoed, and the promise in his voice followed me all the way back to the medical bay.
I drove home at six with Sofia sitting on the passenger seat and my mother’s text churning through my mind.
Gotten yourself into.
I hadn’t replied, but that wouldn’t dissuade her. Once she had an idea in her mind, it was full speed ahead without stopping.
Or considering anyone but herself.
I passed the gas station and the diner on Main Street, the trees on both sides showing off their baby spring leaves. My father had driven this route at all hours for years and known every curve before the headlights found it.
My mother would arrive Friday and she’d look at the facility and the orcs and the creatures, and she’d turn to me, and she’d have questions. Good ones, probably. Sensible. The kind that would make me feel thirteen while I was answering them.
Sofia made a low sound.
“You’re right,” I said. “I need to stop thinking about this. I have a few days before she arrives.”
I drove the rest of the way home thinking about twins who stood up on their first morning and a notebook with my name in it more than once.
Gotten yourself into.
My mother wasn’t wrong. I had gotten myself into something. Whether she understood that this wasn’t a problem or not would soon play itself out.
What would she think when she stood in front of the mirrormoose, watching her own face look back at her?
I pulled into my driveway as the last of the daylight faded.
Sofia chirped from the passenger seat, eager to go inside, where I’d feed her.
My phone sat in the cupholder, my mother’s text still unanswered.
I picked it up, my thumbs hovering over the keyboard.
What would I tell her? That I’d spent last night delivering twins in a cave? That I’d kissed a seven-foot orc in the medical bay this morning and then let him give me incredible pleasure in the conference room this afternoon? That creatures had chosen me, and I’d chosen them back, and maybe I was building something here that looked nothing like the life she thought I should want?
The cursor blinked, waiting.
I typed,Friday works. See you then.
I hit send before I could reconsider.
Sofia peeped, and I looked over to find her watching me with her round, knowing eyes.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I said.
She peeped again, which I’d learned meant she had opinions, and I should listen to them.
“Fine. You’re right. This is probably going to be a disaster.”
She settled into the seat, satisfied she’d made her point.
I sat in the truck a moment longer, looking at my cottage. Dad’s cottage, technically, though he’d been gone three years and I’d lived here alone since. The porch light sent a warm yellow glow across the front lawn, and through the front window I could see the kitchen table where I’d left the clinic sale paperwork.
I’d walked away from that building, the exam rooms that still smelled like him, and the life he’d built, and I’d been maintaining instead of living.
And I’d walked toward something new. My life included creatures who mirrored their surroundings and tiny orangeemberkits who built gift thrones, and an orc who wrote my name in his notebook.
