Page 5 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

She shivers, then shakes her head. Of course he would ask that, she was gone for a full hour longer than she should have, but she hesitates before answering.

DELINA (9:24 AM): Ran into work buddy, chatted for a while.

And even telling that lie sends her stomach into a pit of guilt.

“Oh fuck this,” she mumbles, then folds up the now alarming wad of cash and shoves it into her purse, putting the car into reverse and pealing out of the parking lot.

She’s not supposed to be the one who reacts to things like this. She’s supposed to have her shit together.

Mashing the buttons on her car until it calls her dad, she drives towards her condo, a knot in her throat, while the phone rings through.

“Hello?” her dad’s voice says, distorted through the speaker.

“Hi, yes, can I come over today?” Delina asks, and her voice is smaller than she would like. “Do lunch or something? It’s my day off.”

“Sure,” he says, easily. “Always.”

“Cool, cool,” Delina rambles. “I’ll be there in a few hours.”

Her father would know what’s up. Would tell her she’s being irrational. Would tell her everything’s okay and that her mother was merely weird.

The thought propels her until she’s back at the condo, balancing the coffees with her purse, and her hands shake while unlocking the door. Her thumb is still numb, of course, making it much more difficult than it should be.

She’s too old for fairy tales and madness.

“There you are,” Maison says, and he’s standing in the kitchen, washing paint from his hands. His eyes crinkle up into a fond look when she walks through the door. “I was getting worried.”

“Sorry, sorry,” she says, the knot in her chest growing. “I didn’t mean to.”

He swoops over to her, plucking the coffees from her hands and setting them aside before pulling her into a kiss, tilting her head back and making her eyes swim, then breaking it just as fast as it started. “All good,” he says, his voice deep. “I painted another note card for your dad, got inspired. I think he’ll like it.”

“I’m going over to him for lunch,” Delina blurts out, and Maison nods, idle. Like he already knew.

“Anything interesting happen?” Maison asks, turning and grabbing his coffee. “You met with…” And he trails off, raising an eyebrow at her.

“Juliette,” Delina fibs, making up a coworker then and there. “You haven’t met her.”

He shrugs, then gives her one of the smiles. One of the smiles that shows his dimple and makes her knees shake and makes her stomach drop with the lies she’s telling him. “Love you.”

“Love you too,” she replies, automatically, though her heart is beating fast, way faster than it should, as he turns back towards his home office, pulling out his phone as he walks away. “Want me to take the drawing to my dad’s?” she calls after him out of habit, wandering into their bedroom, staring uselessly at it.

Maison’s blue button up from yesterday hangs haphazardly over their hamper, and his slippers are neatly tucked into their place on his side of the bed. Her books are strewn all over her side table, and his phone charger is fraying at the cord end, like his always do after a few months of use.

His sketchbook lays propped open, from where he obviously started to sketch something the night before, and the random collection of too fancy pens that are always around clutter up the top of his dresser.

She’s known him since undergrad. She’s lived with him for five years. She knows what laundry detergent he prefers and his favorite brand of string cheese. She’s slept next to him and heard his soft snoring and cuddled against him on the rare snowy night in northern Arizona, and dozed next to him on top of the sheets when the air conditioning broke two summers ago. He likes pretzels and dislikes peanut butter and wanted to work in animation before he got pulled into corporate graphic design.

And now she’s lying to him based on an obviously insane letter from her biological mother that she’s never met.

“Sure,” he says, voice slightly muffled by the door between them. “Tell me if he likes it.”

Impulsive, she shoves an extra pair of underwear in her purse, then coils up her own, non-frayed phone charger, her heart pounding, then she drifts back into his home office.

She shouldn’t be this affected.

The light streams through the window blinds, and he has two computer screens with photoshop open and three messy watercolors drying on the desk next to his keyboard as he pokes on his phone, a frown across his face.

Heart still pounding, she kisses the top of his head, and he leans against her for a brief, familiar second, before pulling away.

---