She gives me a searching look. “You must have left Atlanta right after you hung up on me. I thought…I thought you’d abandoned us.”
“Sorry about that. I hoped you’d forgive me for cutting out unnecessary pleasantries to save time.”
To my surprise, she leans into my chest again for half a second, burying her face in my shirt. My heart beats harder as she nuzzles against it. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
I wrap a single arm around her, letting my fingers brush the ends of her hair as Cookie renews her campaign of pawing at my legs. Nora is not a hugger in general, from what I’ve seen, and she is definitely not a hugger of me. Even though there are plenty of reasons why I shouldn’t want to hold her, the voice in my head insists I should enjoy the contact while I can.
With a sigh, Nora pulls back and says, “Come inside and have some coffee with Nathaniel and me. We made bucketloads.”
I nearly do a double take.
“You pepper-sprayed him, and now he’s hanging out with you?” I figured it would be a friendship deal-breaker. Then again, Nathaniel has always seemed lonely to me, like my dad was before he met Hannah and her crew.
I met Nathaniel when I attended the garden party he held the spring before last to celebrate Earth Day. He’d posted about it on Nextdoor at least a dozen times, and I felt guilty for ignoring him like everyone else seemed to. So I convinced the woman I was dating at the time to go with me.
We were the only people there, and within five minutes of our arrival, Nathaniel brought out a jug of fly larvae and gave us a ten-minute presentation on the life cycle of flies.
Rebecca kept making comments about our busy schedule and what a hot day it was—and when he finished the presentation and announced our next activity was compost making, she walked out.
I wasn’t particularly interested in making compost, but I felt bad for Nathaniel. So I stayed, and he made me iced tea sweetened with his own harvested honey and told me about the career he’d just retired from: working at the WNC Nature Center. He’d taken care of the animals there for years, and at one point he’d kept a pet raccoon—off the books, since it’s illegal to keep wild animals in the home in North Carolina.
Given his history with raccoons and his reliance on a wired telephone, he’d seemed like the most natural person to call in the middle of the night, especially since his house is right next to the greenway.
“Yeah,” Nora says with a luminous smile. “I guess I’m not entirely without charm after all. If I were, you would have had to get me out of the slammer.”
“You’re assuming I’d bail you out.”
“Oh, I know you would. But you don’t need to, because I’m surprisingly charming.”
“I knew you were good at talking people into things.” I point to myself. “You talked me into going on that fake double date.”
“I promise it’ll feelexcruciatinglyreal.” She nudges my shoulder, the feeling a bigger jolt than the caffeine’s likelyto be.
She’s smiling, and I know I’m supposed to smile back. Everything is all right now.
But last night could have turned out so differently. What if the racoon had been rabid, or some creep had been out there lurking in the woods?
She’s okay. She’s fine. Cookie’s fine. They’re all right.
“Go on into the kitchen. I’ll join you both in a minute,” I say, needing a moment to process everything.
As soon as she leaves, I get down on my haunches to properly greet Cookie, who’s grown more frantic for my attention. Bowing my head to press it to hers, I breathe her in. “You gave me a scare, girl. Let’s keep it in the yard, huh?”
She barks once in answer, licks my nose, then trots off in Nora’s direction.
I watch in amazement, because Cookie has never liked anyone other than me?—
Until now.
Things are changing again, the world shifting beneath my feet. I take a moment to ground myself and then walk to the kitchen, nearly tripping over a misaligned floorboard when I catch sight of Nathaniel sitting in my tiny kitchen dining nook in his overalls.
His face is bright red except for pale circles surrounding his bloodshot eyes. “Oh shit, that looks really bad. What happened to your eyes?”
I gesture to the troubling circle pattern.
He chuckles, then winces. “My ex-girlfriend said my night-vision goggles were a waste of money. I’m going to write her a letter telling her she was wrong. If I hadn’t been wearing these, no telling what would have happened.”
Nora snorts as she fills a mug with coffee and thrusts it at me, the motion nearly forceful enough to slosh the liquid out.
