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He didn’t have to say anything. I knew exactly what was going through his head. Why did I have his sister’s Yoda? A sister he didn’t even know I knew about. Let alone had met.
“You want one, too, North?” Jaeg asked, nudging Callum in the arm and laughing.
North ignored them. It was a standoff as we stared at each another while the others laughed at something, completely oblivious to the threatening storm.
A voice crackled through the air. “Which one of you brought scotch into my house?”
All gazes, including North’s, swung to Hettie who was standing at the top of the stairs, wearing her purple plush zippered robe with a pair of white slippers and her hair knotted into a bun.
Hettie had four rules. No cell phones at the table. And no weapons, drugs, or alcohol in her house. Period.
Saint lowered his head and stared at his lap, muttering something beneath his breath. Jaeg shifted his feet and stared at the chessboard sitting on the coffee table while Callum hid the scotch behind the couch cushions.
North threw a dart at the board.
Hettie wasn’t a mind reader, but she could read a whole goddamn story in your eyes, and that was why no one was looking at her.
I didn’t lower my eyes. I didn’t have to because I didn’t drink, and even if I did, the nightmares lingering in the depths were impossible to get past. Even for Hettie.
She walked down the stairs. “Well?” Hettie asked, turning to look at each of us. “Who is responsible?”
“What scotch?” Jaeg replied.
“Jaeger Mason, you’re a Fibber McGee!” she exclaimed. “I can smell it on the lie spurting from your mouth.”
I shook my head. Idiot. I leaned up against the wall, crossing my arms.
No one spoke. And Hettie knew we wouldn’t. We had a code between us—Zero Crow. Didn’t matter what we’d done or what the consequences were, we took the consequences together.
She held out her hand. “The bottle, please.”
Callum stiffened.
Jaeg sighed, then bent over the couch and pushed the cushion aside to grab the bottle. He straightened and walked over to Hettie and passed it over.
“Thank you. I expect everyone is staying here tonight?” Hettie asked.
There were nods around the room. “Great,” she said, smiling.
Jaeg swore beneath his breath because Hettie smiling after finding alcohol in her house wasn’t a good sign.
“Don’t be up too late. Have a good night, boys.” Hettie walked up the stairs with the bottle of scotch dangling from her hand.
She stopped at the top, her hand on the doorknob. “Oh, and by the way, the driveway will need shoveling in the morning. We’re expecting fifteen centimeters tonight, and I have to drive Mr. Oliver to the hospital for his MRI.” Her lip twitched. “By six.”
The driveway was the size of a basketball court, and even with all of us shoveling, it would take us a couple hours in the freezing cold.
Jaeg’s mouth dropped open. “But Carl plows the driveway with his truck.”
“Not tomorrow, he isn’t,” Hettie replied as she waltzed out, softly shutting the door behind her.
Macayla
Three weeks. That’s how long Vic had been gone, and as much as I tried to ignore that fact, it was like a flashing billboard blaring in my head.
I wrote songs at night, but it was too cold now to sit outside, so I sat in the living room in front of the window, trying not to admit that I sat there because I was waiting for his headlights.
I’d spent a week going through all the napkins with stray lyrics written on them that I’d kept in my mother’s guitar case. Mom used to say if a lyric or phrase pops into your head, never wait to write it down. Find whatever you can and cement it in writing. Because if you don’t, it’ll be gone by the time you do.
