Miranda's blatant disregard for her safety boils my blood to a dangerous degree.
Did she have a death wish, or was she determined to prove she didn’t need me? She didn’t understand the difference between flexing her independence and being straight up reckless.
I seethed with fury, torn between wanting to protect her and wanting to lash out at her idiocy.
“Had to? You couldn’t have waited until this evening when we could have gone together? Do you know how dangerous that was? You should have taken me with you.”
Her nostrils flared with defiance. “I handled myself just fine. I was going to tell you I’m taking the night off since...” she trailed off, but I knew.
It was mid-afternoon, and she hadn’t slept yet, not even after we practically broke that bed.
Bringing her to the point, I gestured to her arm. “You got hurt. Who knows how much worse it could have been?”
As angry as I was, deep down, all I wanted was for her to be safe.
Still, my body reacted with visceral, primal energy. My brain kicked up a buzzing sound. Tendons and muscles flexed inside me, threatening to elongate and shift for the second time today. I was about to lose my cool and knew I should start working on getting control of myself before I did something I regretted.
“It was fine,” she said, her voice like granite.
She was going to drive me insane. I mean, I was still half unhinged, but she was going to send the rest of me careening back over the edge of sanity.
Too furious to form coherent sentences, I took a deep breath and tried to calm the gears grinding against each other in my mind.
“Now explain why you gave my kid a dog,” Miranda crossed her arms, fully on the defensive again.
It took everything in me to speak slowly, carefully. “I remembered what you told me about your dog getting hit by a car when you were young.” I started.
I knew it affected her deeply when she pushed the words out to me, confessing that one day while she was playing in the yard and didn’t want to watch the puppy anymore, she sent it away. That’s when it got hit by a car.
Miranda dropped her arms, an unreadable expression coming over her face. Not quite blank, but almost a deer in headlights look.
“So I went to the underworld, tried to find him.”
Her entire body tensed. “Find who?”
“Your dog. I didn’t find him, but I found... someone else.”
“You got me a dog from the underworld?” Miranda’s voice seemed to come from a far away place. Like she couldn’t comprehend what I was saying.
I wanted her to heal from her grief. To bring back what she lost so she could feel safe enough to let her guard down, to have fun, to love.
But she looked anything but elated.
Starting to grow uncomfortable, I stared past her to the browning grass. “Well, really, the Afterlife. So he’s immortal. House trained, low maintenance. I thought it might be… fun?”
The dog rounded the corner at that exact moment. He immediately began to explore his new surroundings, his tail wagging like a flag in a breeze. He sniffed around, then with a sudden burst of energy performed an impossible leap, flipping over in mid-air before landing perfectly on his paws. It was a subtle hint of his otherworldly nature.
He was showing off for his new master.
Jamal’s voice broke through as he rounded the corner. “Hey Mom, dinner is ready. Can we go get Heinz some dog food right after?”
"Heinz?” Miranda asked.
“He’s like that Heinz 57 sauce,” Jamal patiently explained, “where there are fifty-seven ingredients. He’s all different kinds of dogs in one.”
“I don’t think that sauce really has fifty-seven ingredients,” she said hesitantly.
Personally, that sounded like too many ingredients for anything, but the kid should do what he wanted.
