“Sorry, must be static,” she says brightly, her heart pounding. “Not used to the weather, you know?”
The clerk scowls at her, hands her the receipt, then busies himself reorganizing the candies, an obvious dismissal.
“Wow,” Delina says aloud, then strides out, gripping the phone, and stands by the rental car long enough to punch in her dad’s number.
DELINA (10:23 PM): Made it safe.
DAD (10:23 PM): Good!
She shivers in the mist, and her hair is going to frizz into something unmanageable, before she glances back at the Buggies.
So. Her hand responded to another thing. This time something closer to her mother’s house.
DAD (10:26 PM): Maison has called four times. I played dumb. He definitely noticed you weren’t where you were supposed to be before he should have, hours before.
Delina stops herself from biting her cheek at that.
DELINA (10:27 PM): Tell me if he suggests to you that he knows?
DAD (10:28 PM): The moment he does, I will. Be safe and have a good drive! It’s pretty up there!
Delina glances up, and she’s not sure she can see the tips of the trees for all the mist.
DELINA (10:29 PM): Gas station clerk says I might not get cell signal, so don’t worry.
DAD (10:30 PM): I will!
With one last shiver, she shoves the phone in her pocket, then climbs back in the car. It’s a ratty sedan, far lesser than her sleek car at home, but it chugs out of the parking lot without a problem.
Bringing her closer to her mother’s cabin.
By the timeshe drives by the little town of Woolley, nestled charmingly in the mountains among the spruce and the dying fall grass, she’s over it. She’s over the cutesy storefronts and the Americana coffee shops and the rain pelleting onto the windshield and the moss on every tree and the advertisements for a winter snow festival in just a month.
Sure, Prescott occasionally gets snow in the winter, but it never lasts, and she gets a creeping dread that the snow might be a bit more intense up here.
So if she stays—her mind blanks out for a few seconds, and she coasts the car to the side of the two lane winding highway—she’ll need better coats.
If she stays.
If, for some reason, there’s something here for her. If there’s magic and her full potential and whatever bullshit that’s supposed to be.
If she has to stay in hiding, away from Maison, away from whatever nemesis her mother has. If she has to abandon all her possessions, never to get them back.
She takes a big, gulping breath, the only sound the absolute drumbeat of rain against the roof of her car, drowning out every other noise.
If she can’t go back, if she can’t resume her job, if she has to live off the inheritance and whatever houses and other things in the will and…
She shuts her eyes, thudding her head against the lumpy seat cushion.
“I just have to go to the cabin,” she whispers to herself, though it’s lost in the thrum of the rain. “Everything else can wait until I’ve gotten to the cabin.”
It’s only a ten-minute drive from where she’s parked, and the only light is her headlamps. With the clouds drumming so heavily, there’s no moonlight, no stars, and certainly no streetlamps.
She lets herself despair for five seconds, then throws the blinker on out of habit, coasting back onto the highway.
DELINA (12:46 AM): Losing cell signal.
Her phone blinkers out before she can get a response, so she drives on, exhaling hard out of her nose.