Page 128 of Her Wicker Guardian

By sample six, he has developed opinions.

Mint chocolate chip gets rejected immediately because, according to Locke, “the flavor tastes cold,” which makes absolutely no sense until I taste my own sample and realize I know exactly what he means. Strawberry earns a thoughtful second taste. Salted caramel beats it. Coffee is dismissed after one spoonful.

“You drink that every morning.”

“I don’t drink it because it tastes like ice cream.”

“Why do you drink it?”

“Because mornings keep happening.”

The girl behind the counter laughs so hard she has to turn away.

Locke eventually chooses salted caramel. When she hands him the cone, he studies it with the same suspicion he gives a new tool whose purpose is obvious but whose construction has not yet earned his trust.

“Lick it before it melts.”

He does.

Startled pleasure crosses his face, and he takes another lick almost immediately.

“Why did nobody give me this before?”

“You’ve been alive a little over a week.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Behind him, the couple near the window has given up pretending they aren’t watching us.

We carry our cones back outside. Mine is chocolate because I have no imagination and no regrets about that. Locke eats his slowly at first, experimenting with how much pressure the cone can take before it collapses between his fingers.

When the ice cream is almost gone, I point to the waffle cone in his hand. “Try the cone.”

Locke takes a careful bite and considers it.

“So?”

“Less good.”

“Accurate.”

We walk toward the square while he works his way downward. People continue to notice us, but the attention has begun to feel less invasive, perhaps because there are limits to how threatening a six-foot Wicker Man can look while carefully negotiating the last inch of a waffle cone.

“Locke!”

He turns before I do.

Tessa is crossing the square toward us with Eli, Connor, and Owen behind her. Connor lifts both arms like he’s just spotted somebody at an airport instead of a man he met in my yard earlier this week.

“You made it,” Tessa says.

Locke looks around the square, then back at her. “I said I was coming.”

“Yeah, but everybody kept saying you weren’t.”

“Everybody was wrong.”

Connor points at the cone in Locke’s hand. “You’ve had ice cream?”