Page 112 of The False Flat

But Aurora followed me. “You don’t owe him anything!”

I whirled back around. “I owe him everything!” And as I opened my mouth to say something else, the need to be telling this to Grant, not my mother, sliced through me.

I moved past the garage to my car, praying my keys were in my purse.

“Penelope! Come back here.” My mother caught up to me, talking louder and more desperately outside than I’d ever heard her. This was shaking her world hard enough that yelling in my driveway seemed reasonable to her.

She beat me to my car door, stood in front of it. “Where are you going?” she demanded.

“To find Grant.”

“You can’t go out like this. Your hair. Your makeup. You don’t have any shoes on.”

Funny, I hadn’t noticed my feet were bare until she’d pointed it out. No wonder she’d outrun me.

I started to go back inside; she lifted her hand to lead me.

Then I stopped. I didn’t need shoes. Of course I needed shoes, but now it was the principle of the thing.

“Get out of my way, Mother.”

She protested. I repeated. And we went back and forth until I contemplated physically picking her up to move her out of my way.

She must’ve finally recognized the unchangeable force inside me because she stepped aside, a rigid step.

“You’re making a mistake. This is beyond foolish.”

“No, you’re the one living a mistake. I’m thankful I finally woke up from this sleep we’ve both been under.”

I ignored my mother and her high-heeled logic. As I wrenched open my car door and praised whatever entity had allowed my keys to remain nestled in my purse, my eye caught movement.

Devina was running across her lawn toward me, her features scrunched in concern, so I stopped, halfway between sitting and standing.

“Are you going to Grant?” she rasped, coming to a stop by my open car door.

I looked at her, bewildered. She knew about Grant? “Yes, I’m headed to his house right now.”

She shook her head. “Didn’t you get his message? He’s not home.”

“No. I can’t find my phone. What message?”

“He came here last night with his sister to make sure you were all right, said he told you about his diagnosis and that you didn’t take it well. Said he was going to give you some space to wrap your head around it because he didn’t want to burden you because you’d been through too much. Went to his friend’s cabin in the mountains. Chuck?” Her words tumbled over one another, like the thoughts in my head.

“Chuck’s cabin? He’s there now? Do you know where it is?” Desperation stung my chest. Grant felt impossibly far away, and I needed to close the distance.

“Don’t know when he was leaving, but that’s what he said. Want to use my phone to call him?”

Three times I called, and it went straight to voicemail. I felt panicky. The sky seemed to commiserate as it darkened, with thunder rumbling in the distance. Rain was coming.

“What about his sister? Can you call her? She’d surely know the address.”

I held Devina’s phone in my hand, willing myself to remember Deanna’s phone number, but it was useless. I’d relied on my phone to store that information and had never committed her number to memory.

“I’ll go to her house,” I said, needing to make progress. A single raindrop landed on my forearm, but I barely registered.

She nodded. “Yes, go. And, it’s worth it. He’s worth it. A short time with a good man is far superior to none at all. I know.”

Her words touched places in me I didn’t even know existed, but she didn’t need to tell me that. That was why I would move hell and earth to find him. I knew I wanted Grant no matter the surrounding circumstances, and now I needed him to know it.