Page 30 of Graveyard Dog

“Remember Theo Lewis’s sixth birthday party?”

“Oh,” she said, uncrossing her arms and smoothing the blanket over her belly. “That wasn’t my fault.”

“What happened at Theo Lewis’s sixth birthday party?” Michael asked.

“Mother,” Emma said as though in warning. “Don’t forget, what happened at Theo Lewis’s sixth birthday party stays at Theo Lewis’s sixth birthday party. We pinky promised.” She held up her pinky as proof.

Michael doubted it would hold up in court.

Izzy dropped her head in shame and offered him an apologetic shrug. “I did pinky promise.”

“Can you tell me later?” he stage-whispered. “I’ll slip you a five.”

“Five dollars to betray my only daughter?” She crinkled her nose and looked up in thought before bouncing back to him. “Make it a ten and you’ve got a deal.”

“Ten it is.”

She winked at him.

Emma stared aghast, her mouth forming a tiny O. “The amount of cold, calculated betrayal in this room is astonishing.”

Michael snorted. “You have an incredible vocabulary for a five-year-old.”

“That’s because only part of me is five,” she said, pride brightening her face. “The rest is one hundred and sixty-two.”

“Well, there is that.”

Chapter Seven

List of things ain’t nobody got time for.

1. That.

—Meme

It took Emma all of three minutes to fall asleep after her breathing treatment. They’d been worried. She’d just had a severe allergic reaction and an asthma attack and ended up at a fire, of all places. But her coughing had died down, and the hoarseness of her voice had softened.

Izzy tucked the blanket around her and sat back in her chair. “Do you think it’s real?”

“What?” he asked, easing back into the chair he’d borrowed from the kitchen.

“Celie.”

“Yeah, about that…” He rubbed his chin. “Emma died?”

“She lost consciousness after being pushed off the monkey bars. I just thought the breath had been knocked out of her. By the time I got to her, one of the dads was giving CPR. It was not my finest moment.”

“Why is that?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

She peeked from under her lashes and said, “I lost my shit.”

He grinned. “Understandable. Were you living here?”

“No. That happened somewhere in Tennessee,” she said, thinking back. “We’ve only been in New Mexico for about a month.”

“Yeah, I was wondering about that. How did you end up here? Santa Fe isn’t exactly cheap.”

“It’s not a very exciting story.”

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