Paige, who operated at a different wavelength than the rest of us, sent exactly one message.
PAIGE: You’ve got this
Her message felt like a hug; taciturn as she was, Paige’s encouragement was a gift. I set my coffee down and pressed the heel of my palm to my eye for a second.
Then Lucy, because it was always Lucy.
LUCY: Wear the green sweater.
CARA: I don’t own a green sweater.
LUCY: THEN BUY ONE.
Me: It’s in four hours.
LUCY: SO GO NOW
PIPER: Lucy.
LUCY: WHAT she looks amazing in green
Me: I’m wearing jeans.
LUCY: I’m going to need you to elaborate on “jeans.”
Me: The ones I always wear.
LUCY: Cara.
Me: What.
PIPER: She means wear something that makes you feel good.
PAIGE: Wear the cream sweater
I stared at the phone.
Me: How did you know I was going to wear the cream sweater?
PAIGE: Because it’s totally you, and you look amazing in it.
LUCY: PAIGE KNOWS ALL
LUCY: Okay, fine the cream sweater
LUCY: But accessorize
I scrolled up to the top of the thread, frowning. Four littlereadindicators sat under every single message. Lucy’s, Piper’s, mine, Paige’s. And Eliza’s. Eliza had read every single message and not typed a single word. Which, in Eliza’s dialect, meant she had Opinions she was choosing not to share. That was somehow more unsettling than Lucy’s caps lock.
I set the phone down on the counter and tried not to smile at it. I failed.
The next three hours went fast. I cleaned things that were already clean, I rearranged things that didn’t need rearranging, and I made approximately fourteen different decisions about a coffee table stack of books before putting them back exactly the way they were.
I vacuumed the living room. Darcy watched me from the top of the bookshelf. Wentworth attacked the vacuum cord every time I turned my back, and twice I nearly ran him over, and once he actually sank his teeth into the plug and I had to unplug thevacuum and pry it gently out of his mouth while he chittered at me in protest.
“You are absolutely not allowed to do stuff like this when Jasper is here,” I told him.
He blinked at me, slow and deliberate.
