Page 2 of Knot the Plan
She holds the paper up. Offering me the space.
I keep my face exactly where it is. My scent is another story. It thins out, going faintly burnt at the edges, and I breathe through it until it settles.
“I don't have any, sweet pea.”
Junie frowns, genuinely confused. “Why not?”
“Just haven't yet.”
“My mama says everybody gets a pack.”
“Your mama's an optimist.” I tap the beard daddy. “He's my favorite. Go put this somewhere safe before someone paints it.”
She trots off, satisfied. Posy wanders over thirty seconds later wanting up, the way she does a dozen times a day, and I set her on my hip and let her tuck her face into my shoulder. For a minute we both get to pretend the morning is going great.
“That was brutal,” Lily says from the doorway.
My co-teacher. My best friend. Currently holding two coffees from Dottie's and the look she gets when she's witnessed something I'd rather she hadn't.
“That was a four-year-old offering me real estate on her family portrait,” I say, setting Posy down at the play kitchen. “I'm fine.”
Lily hums, unconvinced, and lets it go.
I take the cup she hands me. The good one. Oat milk, too much cinnamon, the order Dottie grumbles about every morning and gets perfect every time. I knock my suppressant back with the first sip, same as always. No heat, no cycle. A tremendous deal, considering the alternative is spending three days a season aching for a pack I don't have.
“Pete flagged me down through the glass this morning,” I say, to change the subject. “Full knuckle-rap. Pointing.”
“He's been on a tear since Monday. He's telling everyone the Johnsons are selling, which they're not, and that the new EMT's fiancée is secretly one of the Pine Valley Calloways, marrying down, which she isn't. She's a nurse. He's just a guy.” Lily sips. “Dottie threatened to decaf him.”
“She'd never.”
“She keeps the threat polished. Anyway.” And her voice does a small shift, casual laid over careful, which I should have clocked. “Your mom called the school line.”
I lower the cup. “When.”
“While you were in the paint thing. I told her you couldn't come to the phone, which was true.” She watches me over the lid. “She used the voice.”
“There's no voice.”
“Josie. There is a voice. That voice could strip the finish off a table.”
She's not wrong. My mother has a tone for when she wants something, and it's never about what she says it's about. A casserole. A cousin's promotion. Whether I'm coming to the thing, and there is always a thing. And tucked inside every thing, smiling, doing very well for himself, an alpha she's decided is just lovely.
“The reunion's in a month,” Lily says, gentle now, which is worse. “She's going to ask if you're bringing anyone.”
“I'm not bringing anyone.”
“I know. She knows. But she'll ask in the way where 'no' becomes a conversation, and the conversation becomes a car ride, and the car ride becomes dinner with a man named Gerald.”
“His name won't be Gerald.”
“It'll be Gerald-shaped regardless.”
Across the room, Posy holds up a pretend soup. I cross over and taste the empty bowl and tell her it needs salt. She nods like a serious little chef and gets back to work.
Then the fire engine goes by.
Twelve children hit the window like the building's been tilted. The truck rolls past slow, lights off, no emergency, just headed back to the station, and up in the cab Finn Morrow staresstraight ahead, doing his level best to ignore an entire window full of waving toddlers.
