Page 9 of Wrong Number, Right Grumpy Sheriff

Cora: So what was the other reason it called him?

Me: A documentary scared me. Seriously, this is truly mortifying!

Jules: Girl, your body is literally paging the man. Your own heart rate ratted you out. That’s the most honest your body’s been in years, listen to it.

Me: I hate you.

Cora: Did he stay? When your heart rate spiked?

Me: …for a minute.

Me: He stood in the doorway and made sure I was okay. I offered him fresh banana bread and he took it. He did this thing where he almost smiled.

Me: Like the muscles considered it, but decided not to.

Jules: She’s waxing poetic about his FACE again.

Cora: Hope, sweetie. You’re baking for him now, aren’t you?

Me: I don’t know what you mean. I bake all the time. It’s a stress thing. You know that.

Jules: I gained ten pounds when you were filing that grade appeal in college.

Cora: You made banana bread. On a Friday night. Who was that for?

Me: It was for ME. I like banana bread.

Jules: Then why’d you have a to-go portion ready?

Me: GOODNIGHT

Jules: She keeps a to-go portion ready for your sheriff. Write that on the wedding invitation.

Me: GOODNIGHT FOREVER.

I put the phone down.

I look at the counter, where there is, in fact, a second loaf already wrapped in foil. For no one. For me. Because I like banana bread and it is completely normal to make two loaves and wrap one up neat and set it by the door where a person could grab it easily on their way out.

I don’t have a crush on the sheriff.

I have a watch problem.

The two things are entirely separate, and I keep them that way, right up until nine-fifteen the next morning when I catch myself putting on mascara before I’ve even had coffee, in a house where the only living thing that’s going to see me is the neighbor’s cat—and I have to sit down on the edge of the bathtub and admit, to the tile, to the grout, to God, that I might be in a little bit of trouble.

chapter

five

Hope

The rain started a little after four, and it has not let up, and I have spent the whole afternoon proving to an empty house that I am completely fine.

I’ve got candles lined up on the kitchen counter in a tidy little row, wicks trimmed, matches beside them, because a competent adult prepares. I’ve got both flashlights out and tested. I moved my small bookcase away from the window in case it leaks.

I am a woman with a plan, and I do not need anyone, and I keep telling myself that in exactly those words, which is maybe how I know I’m a little bit scared.

Because here’s the thing nobody warns you about a house at the back end of a county road: when the weather turns mean, it turns out the walls are thinner than you thought. The rain comes down so hard it stops sounding like rain and starts sounding like hands, a thousand of them, slapping the roof all at once, nails scraping against the windows.