Page 66 of Mistaken

All those years, she’d never mourned her father the way she believed she should. Of course, she had cried for him and thought of all the time that had been taken from them — his chance to watch her on stage in a real professional production, the opportunity to hopefully one day walk her down the aisle and see his grandchildren come into the world. All those moments had been stolen by the cancer that had been eating away at him, unknown, for months, but she had barely begun to understand what that loss truly meant before the Heat swept over the world. Afterward, she’d had to think of survival and little else, and even once things stabilized in Los Alamos and the people there began to think they might have something resembling a normal life after all, she’d done her best to push her grief aside. Everyone around her had suffered their own losses, and they hadn’t been able to say goodbye the way she had. Who was she to indulge her grief?

So she hadn’t, had kept it tucked away in a secret little corner of her soul. And she’d thought that she could never sing “Wishing” again, not ever, because if she did, all the pain and the loss would come pouring out and she’d never be able to bottle it up again.

But that wasn’t what had happened. It had hurt to sing those words, lyrics where Christine’s loss so neatly echoed her own, but instead of falling down into a ball of mush, somehow giving voice to those sentiments made her stronger by the minute, until at the end, she was bursting with so much energy she thought she probably could have held that high G for hours.

Now she was positively cheerful as she took off the white dress and carefully hung it in the closet, figuring she could change back into it for dinner if she decided she wanted to be a little fancy. It felt good to get into her jeans and another loose, comfy blouse, mostly because she knew she could look forward to some time in the garden, and then they would go on a ride, maybe bring a picnic lunch along since it was still fairly early and it might be fun to eat away from the house for once.

And it felt even better to know she’d be doing all these things with Abdul, the one person in the world who shouldn’t have understood her at all but somehow managed to appreciate all her quirks and foibles and odd little angles.

She knew she was smiling as she left her bedroom and headed to the kitchen. As promised, he was waiting there for her, although he was staring out the window with a distracted expression on his face.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, and he put his fingers to his lips and beckoned for her to come closer.

Mystified, she did as he requested…then shook her head when she spied the mule deer doe standing in the middle of their vegetable garden, calmly munching away on some lettuce. Her sides were distended, telling Sarah the animal was probably eating for two.

“There goes our salad,” she murmured, and he chuckled.

“I can summon whatever we need,” he said, also keeping his voice low. “But because it looks as though she is about to have that baby any day now, she probably needs the lettuce more than we do.”

Fair enough. It seemed obvious that Abdul didn’t want to scare her off, which meant a change of plans was in order.

“I assume we won’t be doing any gardening this morning,” Sarah said.

“No, we should leave her to her breakfast. I don’t want to frighten her away by coming and going from the house — would you mind if I transported the two of us to the stables instead?”

His eyes didn’t quite meet hers as he made this request, and she wondered if he was worried she might think he was forcing things by suggesting they get away from the house using the djinn mode of travel.

No force required, though; she looked forward to holding on to him as they traveled to the stables.

“I don’t mind,” she said, and stepped closer. “Ready when you are.”

A relieved smile tugged at his lips, and at once he put his arms around her, holding her close.

Yes, that was just perfect.

What wasn’t perfect was that odd non-space in between here and there, the one that made it seem as though they had crossed some kind of incomprehensible void to journey to a spot that wasn’t even a quarter-mile away. However, it didn’t last long enough to be utterly nauseating, although Sarah hung on to him for a moment longer so she could get her bearings once they appeared outside the stables.

She didn’t see the horses inside, but that was all right — Abdul lifted his fingers to his mouth and did a pretty damn good “come here” whistle, and immediately his big black stallion and the blood bay mare that had become Sarah’s regular mount came trotting over, looking perky and raring to go.

“Handy,” she remarked, and he only shrugged.

“They were very well-trained horses when I found them.”

They must have been pretty young, barely more than yearlings, because right now they looked as though they were in the prime of life. By this point, she was used to putting on her mare’s saddle and getting her bridle set up just so, and only a few minutes passed before they were mounted up and heading away from the ranch and into the hills.

Big cottonball puffs of clouds floated overhead, and Sarah wondered if once again they might have rain later this afternoon. That was all right, though — they were getting such an early start that they’d be able to have a good long ride and lunch before they needed to start worrying about the weather.

This was one of their favorite rides, the one that led up into the canyon with the waterfall and the stream that flowed through it. The air seemed a little cooler than it had the day before, and she could tell the horses were cheered by not having to slog through the heat, their tails swishing and their heads up as they reached their destination.

Sarah and Abdul both dismounted and allowed the horses to wander off toward the stream, since they would return just as soon as they were called. The shade under the trees beckoned them, and when they approached the largest of the cottonwoods, she saw that a small wooden table and two chairs had already been set up there, with a picnic basket waiting on the tabletop.

“It’s great that you didn’t have to make the horses carry our lunch,” she said as they approached their picnic spot. “They might have had something to say about that.”

“Possibly,” Abdul agreed as he unfolded the cloth that had covered the basket’s contents and began setting out plates and napkins and a dizzying array of cheese and meat and fruit. “I hope you don’t mind this kind of food. It seemed to suit the day.”

Since Sarah honestly couldn’t remember the last time she’d had anything remotely resembling a charcuterie board, the setup looked positively amazing to her. “It’s perfect,” she told him. “I always loved these kinds of picnics.”

He looked pleased by her comment, and continued with his setup until at last he pulled a bottle of wine and some glasses out of the basket. She could have sworn there wasn’t room for those items in there, but then, this was Abdul she was dealing with. Very likely, he’d summoned the wine and the glasses at the last minute after deciding what would be best to accompany their feast.

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