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The day passed pretty uneventfully, since the twins weren’t up for much. They decided movies in the living room was the order of the day, and I had no problem with that. My time was taken up with unpacking their camp bags and starting all their laundry. How they’d managed to get their clothes so grubby, I didn’t know. At least they had evidence they’d had a good time.
Honor didn’t come out of the office until the afternoon, and I hoped she hadn’t been avoiding coming out to avoid me. Fuck, why was she so hard to read? Why was it so hard to figure her out?
When she did emerge, I tried not to look at her.
She went for her usual glass of water, and it was like I could hear her every single movement.
“Layne?” one of the twins said.
“What?” I said, jumping. I’d been pretending to pick some dead leaves off one of the houseplants.
“Can we have some soda?” Zoey popped her head up and pouted at me.
“You know your parent’s rule about soda,” I said. “You can have water or iced tea or lemonade or seltzer water.”
Zoey huffed and asked for seltzer and then Riley wanted some too, so I went to the fridge and got them out. Normally I wasn’t their drink fetcher, but I was willing to do it today.
Honor was still in the kitchen when I moved to the fridge to get the cold drinks.
“You wait on them now too?” she said.
“What?” I pretended I hadn’t heard her over the noise of the fridge.
“Nothing,” Honor said when I closed the fridge.
“No, what did you say?” I set the cold cans down on the counter and leaned on it. “You’ve never been scared to speak your mind before. Lay it on me.”
I gestured for her to tell me the truth.
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing to my bracelet.
“The twins made it for me at camp,” I said, showing her. Why was I telling her? I didn’t need to talk to her. Every time I talked to her, I got annoyed.
“That’s…sweet,” she said, and I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic.
“They’re good kids,” I said. I wanted to say so much more, but I closed my mouth.
Honor didn’t respond, but Riley called for me.
“Sorry, I have to get back to being a servant,” I said to Honor, emphasizing the last word.
Before she could say anything else, I picked up the cans and took them back into the living room.
“Thank you,” Riley said as I handed over the can. Zoey thanked me as well and I sat down next to them on the couch for a few minutes.
What was Honor’s deal? Had she missed me or something? One of these days I was going to straight up ask her and see what happened.
I brooded about Honor for the rest of the day. The twins actually took a nap and only woke up when it was time for dinner.
I went to alert Mark and accidentally made eye contact with Honor.
“I’ll be done in a few minutes,” Honor said.
“Fine, that’s good,” Mark said, standing up and stretching. I kept telling him that he needed to get a standing desk, but he was stubborn as hell and it was going to catch up with him one of these days.
I left the room without asking Honor to stay, so I was pretty proud of myself for not doing that and adding to the strangeness between us.
I wish the twins had been here last week to see what Honor had been up to with their dad. Not that I would condone spying, but they could have done a little eavesdropping and just doing a general vibe check.
