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She came back down with something behind her back.
“If you brought me a frog or a bug, I’m going to murder you and make it look like an accident,” I said, getting stressed out.
“It’s not a bug,” Riley said. “Calm down and hold out your hand.”
I held out my hand but was ready to drop whatever it was if she was lying to me.
Riley dropped something small into my hand and I looked down to find a woven bracelet with a few beads on it that spelled something.
“Oh, Riley,” I said, realizing the letters spelled my name and there were also little rainbow heart beads.
“We made it gay for you,” Zoey said.
“You girls,” I said, squeezing them both. “This is so much better than a frog.”
“We made one for Mom too. She cried,” Zoey said.
“I bet she did,” I said a little sniffly myself.
Mark told them it was time to shower and get ready for bed and they whined and protested, but finally agreed. I got more hugs and they helped me tie on my bracelet.
“Thanks for coming over,” Mark said. “I know they were missing you.”
“I missed them too.” I stood up and told him I’d see him tomorrow morning and went back to the guest house feeling a lot better as I played with the new bracelet on my wrist.
* * *
Monday morning came too soon,but there wasn’t much could do about it.
I got myself up and dressed and over to the house to make pancakes for my monsters, who were exhausted from camp.
Since they would not be dragged from bed, I was a nice nanny and brought it up to them on a tray.
“Now don’t think this is happening every day. This is a special welcome back from camp breakfast,” I said as I carefully set the tray down on Riley’s bed. Zoey had climbed in with her, as they often did. More mornings than not I’d find them in the same bed together. Like they slept better when they weren’t separated.
Neither of them was very awake, so I left them to their food and went back down to clean up and found Honor arriving.
“Oh,” she said as she saw me coming down the stairs. “Good morning.” Normally she didn’t even give me the courtesy of a nod, so this was new.
“Good morning?” I said and it sounded like a question.
I reached the downstairs and I thought she was going to brush right by after all that stimulating conversation, but she didn’t. She paused, clutching onto her bag as if it was a life raft.
Why was she being so weird?
“Did you have a nice vacation?”
I stared at her. Had she gotten a personality transplant? Had she been taken over by a parasite? Was she in some sort of self-improvement program that emphasized small talk?
“Yes?” I said hesitantly.
“Good,” she said, and then she rushed past me as if her hair was on fire.
The fuck?
* * *
I was veryaware of Honor for the rest of the day. I kept waiting for her to pop up and awkwardly ask me about the weather or something.
