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We finish the dishes. Miller wipes his hands, tosses the towel over his shoulder, then pauses like something just occurred to him.

“I think there’s some mail for you in the mudroom. Might be worth flipping through.”

The only mail I get is junk, but all right.

When he’s out and the house is mostly silent beyond Lottie and Odelia upstairs and my parents arguing over the remote in their room, I slip into the mudroom and find not a stack of mail, but a single brochure to a community college.

Diesel mechanic scholarships now available. Apply here.

My stomach goes weird. Light. Heavy. All at once. This isn’t what he meant by mail for me, right? He’s not suggesting…

No.

A diesel mechanic… A life that doesn’t start and end with cattle gates and feed spreadsheets.

The thought settles into me slowly, like warm water filling my lungs, until I can’t tell if I’m relieved or terrified.

In my pocket, my phone buzzes again—maybe Felicity, maybe Riley, maybe no one. It doesn’t matter because I don’t check it.

I’m too busy staring at the brochure, at the ghost of a future I’ve never allowed myself to imagine.

Chapter Thirty-Six Flick

I’ve learned over the years that the worst thoughts always come at night.

That raw, gnawing feeling in my gut deepens to the point where there’s nothing else you can think of—just the same moments in time on repeat in your head.

During the day, I can distract myself with classes. There’s running errands and seeing friends, and Knox’s warm hand in mine. Always something there to pull me from the drifting thoughts.

Even as a kid, when I tried to wipe the memory of my mom’s drinking, the images of her passed out on different floors and couches were always somewhere in the back of my mind. It was at night that they always came back in full force though, demons that persisted.

The thoughts wait until I’m horizontal, staring at the ceiling, counting the waves and dips like they might rearrange into a clearer answer if I look hard enough.

It’s been a week; a full week since I opened the front door to Riley and Rowen on the couch as if it was the most normal thing in the world. A week of replaying it in my head, wondering how it possibly could have gotten to that point. Doing the math in my head that can never give me the solid, clear answer of how or why or when.

Don’t they feel guilty? Remorseful and backstabbing?

I know it’s been a long time, over eighteen years, but still it’s…I don’t know. Wrong.

There’s a soft knock on my bedroom door. I don’t answer in hopes Riley will think I’m sleeping, but then again, it’s only seven thirty and the time change hasn’t shifted yet, so it’s barely even dark outside.

The door slowly creaks open and Riley peeps her head in like she’s a zoo feeder there to give the angry hippo their daily enrichment. “Hey,” she draws out. “I brought reinforcements.”

She has a terracotta bowl cupped between her hands; steam curls up into the air and the familiar smell hits me immediately: beans, spice, and comfort.

Her world-famous chili that she has yet to let a single person have the recipe for—she tweaks it for me each time, setting aside a bowl with no meat or cheese in it. I consider holding the whole Rowen thing over her head in hopes of guilt-tripping her into telling me the recipe, but even that doesn’t sound satisfying at the moment.

I sit up a little, though, despite myself. “You’re bribing me.”

“Maybe,” she says, crossing the room. “Yes.”

She sets the bowl and a spoon on my nightstand before sitting on the very end of my bed like she’s not sure if she’s allowed to—she should. It’s all her stuff anyway, not like I’ve ever paid rent or bought my own furniture here.

I take the bowl in my lap, sitting up and pausing the TV playing a rerun of The Parent Trap. We both sit there for a second, the space between us heavy and the silence thick with all the things neither of us can say.

I’m mad, and she knows it. I’m hurt, and she knows it. I’m confused, disappointed, angry, and she knows it.

“You know,” Riley breaks first. “When I started managing the tavern, your mom was the first waitress I ever hired.”