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“I will never be able to eat all of this,” I protested faintly.
A familiar voice floated over my shoulder. “Yay, you got enough food for me.”
Zoe slid into the seat beside me without waiting to be invited, her bangles chiming, her eyeliner perfect as usual. She pressed a quick kiss to my temple and stole a strip of bacon as she bumped her hip into mine.
“I see you started without me,” she said.
“I see you’re stealing my bacon,” I replied.
“I came immediately, that earns me one strip,” she said, unrepentant.
Little Grandma sat back with her biscuit and tea, satisfaction written in every line of her face.
My sister on one side, the town matriarch across from me, a ridiculous amount of breakfast in front of me, and Jasper Creek just beyond the window.
For the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like a mute girl in a ruined city.
I felt…loud. In a good way.
Not fixed.
But better.
And maybe, just maybe, ready for whatever Saturday’s barbecue was going to throw at me.
Chapter Twelve
I’d forgotten how loud quiet could be.
The woods off the Jasper Creek trailhead swallowed town noise in about thirty yards. One minute you had distant traffic and somebody’s dog barking, the next it was just wind in the branches and the grind of gravel under my boots.
Was this helping or was I just inventing a new way to torture myself?
These were the same trails Chloe and I used to hike on Sundays when we were playing at being outdoorsy. Back when weekend plans meant pack a lunch, go see the overlook, talk about maybe someday bringing kids up here in tiny hiking boots.
I hadn’t set foot out here since she’d moved out.
Hell, if I was honest, I hadn’t really been hiking since we lost Kristen. There’d been the one time I’d walked into the trees with a loaded Glock and a head full of ghosts, but that didn’t count as a nature walk.
I jammed my hands into the pockets of my jacket and kept moving.
There was something almost…holy about this place. I didn’t mean that in a church way. Just—trees towering overhead, ferns crowding the edges of the path, the creek talking to itself somewhere downhill. It made all the shit that lived in my head feel smaller, like it didn’t matter so much in the face of moss and rock and ten thousand years of erosion.
Grounding, my therapist would’ve called it, if I’d ever actually gone to see one.
I’d left the house early, too restless to sit with my thoughts and too bruised to do much else. Cleaning was already done; hell, I’d scrubbed baseboards at two in the morning like a man trying to erase himself.
So, I’d driven instead. Out of town, up the familiar curve of the road, until the parking lot appeared like it had all my life.
The main trail switchbacked up the side of the hill, packed dirt and scattered roots. I walked it on autopilot, legs remembering the climb even if my head wanted to be anywhere else. After a while, the path forked—one way down to the water, one way toward the lookout.
I took the lookout.
Habit, I guess.
Halfway up, I cut off the main trail and bushwhacked a little, heading higher through the trees. The air thinned and cooled. My ribs complained at the steeper climb but it was a clean kind of pain, not the tearing, wrong kind from the cage. I kept going until the trees thinned and the ground leveled out.
There it was.
