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Of course, when her emotions had settled down, so had her nausea.
“Hey, Mina,” a woman’s voice called from behind her. Mina stood and turned around to see her neighbor Echo standing on the sidewalk with her fluffy little dog on the other end of the leash, the dog’s tongue flipping in and out of its mouth in exaggerated, adorable pants. “Nice garden bed.”
“Thank you.” Mina took advantage of the opportunity for a break. She and Echo had spoken a couple of times when her neighbor walked past with her dog. The woman seemed friendly and interesting and worth getting to know a little better.
“Was that Levi I saw helping you build it?”
“Yeah...” Mina replied, not sure where this was going.
Echo looked right and left, as if checking for spies in the bushes. “I’ve barely gotten Levi to say hi to me when Noodle and I walk by.”
Noodle? The dog with the papillon ears and dachshund body and Pomeranian coat was named Noodle? Echo might be even more interesting than Mina had thought.
“I’m not sure he wanted to help,” Mina said, feeling the lie stick on her tongue as she tried to make Sunday sound like no big deal. Echo caught the lie, too, because her eyebrows lifted up to her hairline.
“Okay, so he wanted to. And he’s brought over my mail and helped me buy a lawn mower, but there’s nothing more.”
Given the continued elevation of her eyebrows, Echo understood the subtext of there might have been something more as easily as she’d recognized the lie. “I want to hear about this. You have dinner plans?”
Other than pasta with butter and Parmesan cheese? “No.”
“The store had some nice-looking salmon. I bought myself a piece for tonight and a piece for tomorrow, but one indulgent dinner with a friend is better than two indulgent nights in by myself. Come over for dinner and a glass of wine, and you can tell me all about how Silent-Neighbor Levi ended up building you a garden bed.”
“Honestly, Echo, there’s not much to tell.” And Mina wasn’t certain she was comfortable sharing what information there was. After all, blurting out “I’m HIV positive” rarely went as well as she hoped with possible friends, too. And she still hadn’t figured out how not to overshare.
“Do you not like salmon? Or wine?” A teenager rode by on a bicycle, and Echo’s little dog barked and jumped about like the devil himself had been on those two wheels. “Or little barky dogs?”
“I like salmon. And I like wine. I’m okay with little barky dogs that aren’t coming home with me.” And she needed to make friends. So she needed to trust a little. Dinner and boy talk wasn’t a bad place to start. “Is there anything I can bring?”
“Bring dessert. Come over in about an hour.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“Gossip in the neighborhood.” Echo tapped the tips of her fingers against one another. “This is doubly exciting because no one ever tells me anything.” The movement of her fingers stopped, and she looked down at her dog, who looked up expectantly. “Probably because gossip is always a trade, and I only like to take. Greedy, my ex-husband always said.”
Mina laughed at the blatant attempt to reassure her. “I’ll be over in an hour, with ice cream.” She was less sure about bringing gossip.
CHAPTER EIGHT
MINA STOOD ON Echo’s front stoop, ice cream in a plastic bag in one hand while attempting not to clench her nerves too tightly in the other. Once, in another lifetime, she would have been bouncing with excitement at a new friend. Her body still remembered those times, and wanting them back was the reason she’d made a point to introduce herself to as many people as she could in her new town, including her cranky, handy-with-a-drill-and-friends-with-the-hardware-store-guy neighbor.
But that Mina had a different, naive understanding of the world. She’d grown up in a happy household, with parents who loved each other and their children. Maybe they were too intrusive in their kids’ lives, maybe they just cared a lot; it didn’t matter. All Mina had known about the world was that it was a place full of nice people you could trust.
The world had acquired shadows since her diagnosis. She didn’t want to go back, really, because shadows added depth and interest, but she occasionally wished she could sink into her old happy-go-lucky self, the one who found the world to be full of friends rather than potential hurts. The one fascinated by the macabre but who didn’t understand it.
