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“Are you all right?” Ellister says low by my ear.
“Yeah. Just processing.”
When my mom comes out, she’s even more beautiful than I remember. “Hello and welcome. How long would you like to stay? A weekend?”
“Um.”Breathe, Hannah, breathe. “We’re not sure.”
“A week? A month?”
Forever.
I glance at Ellister, using his presence as my strength. “My husband and I have been traveling a lot. We’re in between jobs and we’re sort of playing it by ear.”
My mom’s expression turns understanding as she reads between the lines—we have nowhere else to go. “All right. I’ll just need a copy of your driver’s licenses and a credit card on file. We can charge nightly, weekly, or monthly. The longer you stay, the more you save. I have a pamphlet with our rates.”
I don’t know how I could’ve let it slip my mind that they require background checks. It should’ve occurred to me that my own parents wouldn’t recognize me, but a part of me actually believed they’d let me in with no questions asked.
They hired Jack when he was in a similar situation, but the world was different then. The internet wasn’t a thing yet, and people tended to take others at their word.
No matter how well I know them, I have to remember that I’m a stranger to these people. A stranger with no proof of existence.
If they look us up, they won’t find anything. We have no identification, and we lack job history.
I’m probably going to have to make up some elaborate story about why we don’t have any records. Maybe I could tell her we grew up in a cult.
“That’s the other issue. We were robbed.” Totally not a lie because that bastard Envy royally screwed us. “We have no IDs and no money. I know that probably sounds like we’re looking for charity, but we’re not. We can pay you, just not upfront.”
Yeah, Ellister will have to do some stealing. His vortex power should hold up for a few weeks before it disappears altogether. In that time, he can collect enough for us to get by on.
“To be honest,” Ellister chimes in, “we just escaped an oppressive community, and it’s been emotionally taxing for us both.”
Well, he didn’t call it a cult, but close enough.
I nod, backing him up. “My husband and I left with very few belongings, and we almost didn’t get out at all. It’d be nice to have some peace for a while, and I can’t think of a better place than here.”
Sympathy blankets my mom’s face. “Oh, you poor dears. Let me go get Bobby. In the meantime, why don’t you have some donuts and apple cider on the house?” Turning her head, she calls to the kitchen, “Chase, would you take care of these two? No charge.”
My eyes sting at her kindness, and I can’t hide my tears when I croak, “Thank you.”
She bustles around the counter. On her way to the door, she stops in front of me and envelopes me in a hug. “It’ll be all right. You’re okay now.”
While I hug her back, I try not to become a sobbing mess.
She’s exactly how I’ve always known her to be. Quite a bit taller than me because she has on those damn heels. She smells like cinnamon. As she ends the hug, she does the double pet on my hair.
Leave it to Catrina Wildwood to welcome a dirt-covered homeless person with literal open arms.
After she leaves, Chase brings us our treats.
I’m curious about the brother I never knew. I want to stick around and ask him questions but pestering him seems like a bad idea when we already showed up under mysterious circumstances.
As he goes back to working the register, Ellister and I decide to go outside to eat on one of the benches. We sit close, our thighs pressed together, while we watch loads of customers arrive.
Kids pile out of cars with parents barking at them to watch for vehicles in the parking lot. A school bus pulls up, and there must be a field trip tour on the schedule today. A newly engaged couple walks past us, the woman chatting about her plans to have their wedding in the barn.
It’s chaos. It’s the life I want.
My heart jumps when I see my dad walking down the driveway with my mom. She’s gesturing wildly, her expression concerned as she states our sad case to him. He scratches his hair, not quite completely white yet at his younger age.
