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“I had to get away. I just—I just wanted to be ordinary for a while.”
“Isn’t this a little extreme?”
“I’m sure it seems that way to you, but—”
“Hey, where is everybody?” They both turned as Lucy stuck her head out the door. The T-shirt she’d slept in came to her knees, and her hair must have been wet when she’d fallen asleep because it stuck up in a rooster tail. Just the sight of her lifted Nealy’s spirits. At least there was one person who thought of her only as Nell.
“We’re out here,” she replied unnecessarily.
“Are you arguing?”
“Not exactly.”
Mat seemed as glad of the interruption as she was. “Where’d you get that T-shirt?”
Lucy scowled. “I found it somewhere.”
“Yeah, in a stack of my clothes.”
Nealy had no desire to continue her conversation with Mat, so she made her way back to the motor home. She was living on borrowed time, and she intended to use every second.
Lucy stepped aside to let her in. “So do we have anything to eat for breakfast that doesn’t blow?”
Nealy restrained herself from hugging her. “Next time let’s just ask if there’s anything edible, okay?”
Lucy glowered. “I’m sick of cereal.”
“Make some toast.”
“Toast blows.”
“Lucy, don’t talk to . . . Nell like that,” Mat said from the doorway.
Nealy rounded on him. “This is between Lucy and me.”
“Yeah, Jorik, just butt out.”
“That’s enough, Lucy,” she said. “You have a . . . a . . . time out for being disrespectful.”
“A time out?” Lucy regarded her incredulously.
Nealy knew about time outs from her visits to nursery schools, and she pointed toward the back. “Fifteen minutes. And shut the door. That way you’ll have some privacy so you can think about how to address adults properly.”
“You’ve got to be shittin’ me.”
“That’s another fifteen minutes for inappropriate language. Do you want to try for longer?”
Lucy looked toward Mat as if she expected him to rescue her from what was clearly Nell’s latest insanity, but he jerked his head to the back. “You’ve got it coming.”
“This sucks! I haven’t even had breakfast!” She stomped away, then banged the door as hard as she could.
Mat set Button down. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to deal with that.”
“Why not? I’ve been dealing with it since Wednesday.”
“Yes, but—”
“Stop treating me like a guest,” she snapped. “I’m going to fix Button’s cereal. If you have something intelligent to say, then say it. Otherwise, just shut up.”
