Seventeen
Paying taxes on roads rough enough to knock a tooth out is wild.
—Odin to Constance
Odin
Great freakin’ question.
What was I doing here?
I’d intended to go home with my tacos and beer.
Instead, I’d found myself driving out of town to a certain woman’s house in the middle of a wildlife sanctuary. Clearly, I wasn’t using my brain.
I had a case of beer under one arm, Peanut’s leash in the other hand, and a bag of tacos between my teeth.
She reached forward to catch the greasy bag from my mouth and looked at me with curiosity.
Waiting for me to answer.
“I was going to go home,” I admitted.
Her shoulders slumped. “But you came here?”
“But I came here,” I agreed.
“Oh.” She nodded. “Do you want to come in?”
I nodded, giving the bird in the tree glaring at me one last glance before I stepped over the threshold.
“Your pet doesn’t seem to like me.”
“He’s jealous,” she admitted. “He likes to monopolize my time. He barely tolerates Wendy. I try to spend alone time with him every single day, because of his obvious control issues, but even that’s not enough sometimes.”
My lips quirked. “Not a bad thing having an animal so fully devoted to you.”
She looked down at Peanut who was leaning against my leg looking up at me with the same devotion. “Looks like you got one of those of your own.”
I shrugged. “He’s extra clingy today. He’s not usually glued so securely to my leg. I think he thought that I’d given him away when I took him to the trainer. When he got here, he turned into this clingy fool.”
“That’s sad,” she said as she walked farther into the house. “Is it snowing too bad yet?”
“Not terrible,” I called after her. “Tonight’s just supposed to be a dusting. The real stuff won’t start for another month or so, according to the locals.”
“You’re not local?” she asked in surprise.
I winced, wondering how I was going to explain this. I hadn’t had the need to use my “lie” before with someone that was going to want to know everything and would likely sense that I wasn’t being completely truthful.
“No.” I shrugged. “Moved here about a year ago.”
Not a lie.
I had moved here.
Only after I’d been broken out of prison.
“Oh.” She nodded. “That makes sense. You said something the day they were choosing jurors about how you weren’t too keen on the snow. How last winter was brutal. But then the lawyer said that it was mild in comparison. You said ‘you wouldn’t know.’”
