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"Just relax," I said. "Call her. Find her. It doesn't matter. You're about to give her the best heart attack of her life."
He grinned. "Right."
He took off, jogging through the house, calling for his mom. Sam started to follow, then saw we weren't and realized this was a moment we should leave to Corey.
I collapsed onto the sofa with a sigh. Daniel plunked down beside me, then twisted to stretch out, legs going over mine.
"Oh my God," I said, shoving his feet off my lap. "Do you know how bad those smell?"
He tried to stick them in my face. I grabbed him around the ankles and tickled the bottom of his feet. He let out a shriek.
"Well, you're still ticklish," I said. "And you still giggle like a girl."
He tried to grab me, but I held his feet tight. Sam slid from the recliner and limped into the next room.
"Our immaturity is scaring her off," I said. "Sorry, Sam. Come back and we'll act our age."
"No, I'm just grabbing some food. You two carry on. You've earned a maturity time-out."
I let go of Daniel's feet and he pulled them off my lap.
"We're home," I said. "Well, not our home but..." I leaned back into the cushions and let out a happy sigh. "Close enough for now."
"Feels good, doesn't it?"
"Unbelievably good."
I opened my eyes and glanced at him.
"Thank you. For keeping me on my feet and getting us back here."
"Um, pretty sure you did at least half of the 'getting us back here' part. And I needed some help staying afloat, too." He paused. "Well, not as much as you, but that's because I'm a guy and we're naturally tougher."
I threw a pillow at him.
"She's not here," Corey called as he thundered down from the second
floor.
TWENTY-SIX
"MOM ISN'T HERE," COREY said. "Neither is Travis. So much for my grand resurrection." He slumped onto the sofa. "We'll have to wait for them. Which is a little anticlimactic."
We decided to clean up and eat. Start looking and feeling human again.
"There's not much in the way of food," Sam said. She'd come out of the kitchen with a Coke and a spoon heaped with peanut butter.
"What?" Corey said. "Mom knows better than to let our cupboards get empty or I'll dig up her stash of fancy chocolate bars."
"The fridge is practically bare," Sam said. "Grocery shopping is apparently the last thing on your mom's mind.
I'm sure there's more in the cupboards. I just stopped at the peanut butter."
We went into the kitchen. Corey headed straight to a cupboard and pulled out cereal and cookies.
"Pop's in the fridge," Sam said.
Daniel got that. As he stood there, door open, he glanced at me. I was looking past him at a loaf of bread, uncovered and rock hard, on the counter. Beside it was a pitcher. The smell of sour milk hit me as I moved closer.
