Page 31 of Ladybirds

“No kidding. Too bad Miles won’t be able to join.” Both his parents are as wonderful as he is—still married, still in love. There’s no wondering how he grew up to be an upstanding human being.

“Oh!” Jen gasps, grinning wide. “He can hook us up with some therapy!”

“Our club’s patron saint of counseling,” Sara laughs.

Jen joins her, earning them both some annoyed looks from the older couple sitting at the table to their left. It only makes them laugh louder and, for a brief moment, Sara doesn’t think about the missing piece of her heart or the itch of the tattoo on her hip.

When she gets home, Seth is already there—hovering over the small kitchen table and staring at the stack of mail she’s left there with a frown. He makes no indication that he’s heard her come in, but Sara knows he must have. Even if she’d been trying to sneak up on him, she doubts she’d succeed.

Dropping her bag by the front door, she crosses her arms under her chest and walks past him without greeting. He’s continued to keep his distance the past few weeks, which she appreciates, but she refuses to offer any kind of interaction he could misinterpret as friendly.

They aren’t friends.

“There’s no ‘h’,” he murmurs, a thread of a question underlying the statement.

Sara pauses, hand on the fridge handle. “What?”

“Your name. There’s no ‘h’ at the end.”

She stares, a little perturbed by his open curiosity. Since Oma’s passing, he’s been more careful in his taunts—slowly reintroducing them and studying her reactions. It reminds her of the way her town would test ponds in the winter—measured step by measured step—before clearing it for the kids to skate.

Still, his innocent statement feels like the beginnings of a trap. Sara narrows her eyes, waiting for the ice to crack beneath her feet. “Yeah, so?”

“I hadn’t realized,” he says, shoulders shrugging. “It’s an uncommon spelling, is it not?”

“I mean, having the ‘h’ is more popular, I guess. But I’ve met a few others with my spelling.”

“How strange,” he mutters, but before she can take it as an insult, he adds, “Is there a reason?”

“Um, no? Not really.” At least, not one that she’d ever heard, but she doesn’t exactly hear a lot about that sort of thing. Anything that involved her mother, any stories that couldn’t be told without erasing her, weren’t told at all. Sara strongly suspects that the choosing of her name is one of them. “My dad used to joke it was one less letter to learn to spell my name.”

Seth’s scoff is haughty, his expression twisting into a scowl. “How… thoughtful.”

She’d be deaf to miss his blatant sarcasm, but Sara doesn’t reward him with a response. Instead, she opens the fridge and pulls out her water pitcher. The tap is probably fine, but the city water has always tasted odd compared to the well water she grew up on.

“I hear I shall have the honor of meeting the man in a few days?”

The pitcher slams on the counter. A small part of her takes a fraction of a second to be thankful it’s made of plastic instead of glass, before she whirls on him. “No.”

“Well, I’m certainly not going to be left behind.”

“You’re not invited.”

“Come now, if that’s your only qualm, I’m sure it can be remedied easily enough.”

“You know it’s not,” she snaps, teeth groaning in her skull. “I don’t want you there.”

“You don’t want me at all,” he corrects, hands sliding into his pant pockets and leaning against the table. “Shall I remind you of how little your wishes sway me?”

She screams, the air hissing through her teeth like a growl, before she stomps away from him. It’s only after she’s slammed her bedroom door, her chest rising and falling with each angry breath, that she realizes she never grabbed a glass of water.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Sara pulls into the driveway, knuckles white on the steering wheel. Her foot releases some of the pressure off the pedal—a vain attempt to stall the inevitable. A glance in her rearview mirror proves that her backseat is empty, but she knows he can’t be far. He never is. “Seth?”

She doesn’t jump when his voice materializes behind her; eyes meeting hers unflinchingly in the mirror. “Princess?”

Her teeth sink into her tongue, stilling the half-hearted protests that sit there. The house she grew up in is just ahead, silhouetted by the evening sun, and there isn’t much time. “I know you live to make my life hell, but can you please, please just shut up while I’m visiting my father?”

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