Page 23 of Who Pissed Off Ivy Dell?

“I’m not sure what I think right now.” It’s not my imagination, dammit. Everybody is acting strange.

“Your friend comes tomorrow, right?”

“She’ll get here tomorrow evening. You wanna hang out with us? I was hoping we could drink wine at Myrna’s for a while. IfTawny’s not too busy, maybe she’ll come over, too. I assume the community center will be set up for the festival and off limits.”

“Yeah, sure. Are you helping with the final festival prep tomorrow?”

“No one has mentioned anything. I specifically told Petra I wanted to help but she hasn’t—”

Josephine and I both laugh at the knock, as if my rising anger has summoned her. I was about to lose it over nothing. Petra steps inside and gives me the rundown. The path needs to be cleaned and raked again, but it’ll go much quicker than the first time. All the signs have to be put out—the signs I didn’t get a chance to repaint. And since I never got back to her about a casita for Zara, she took it upon herself to prepare the one next to Myrna’s.

“When did you do that? I never even saw you over there.”

“I came by, but you didn’t answer. Assumed you were with Stinger.”

“You should’ve called me. I would’ve come and taken care of that. But thanks.”

“He’s been angry enough lately. I didn’t want to add to it by taking you away for a few hours.”

“Jensen’s been angry? When?”

“Angry is probably not the right word. We’re all a little off-kilter, I suppose.”

“Because of the festival? Does everyone always get anxious like this right before it?”

Josephine shrugs. “Yeah, I think that’s probably it. It’s such a big undertaking, but you forget every year how draining it is.”

“It is draining,” Petra agrees. She doesn’t seem agitated, and that’s weird, too, because someone just answered for her, and she won’t usually let that slide. The woman likes to speak for herself.

“Sneaks up on you,” Josephine says.

“Sure does. Time slips away. Speaking of Stinger, he’s going to be busy all weekend, so if you want to see him again before Monday night’s dinner, tonight is probably your last chance. I assume you’ll want to spend time with Zara tomorrow night.”

“Yeah, I was thinking maybe I’d introduce her to everyone, take her to dinner, and then we could hang out with anyone who’s available for a wine night.”

“Why the hell not?” Petra throws her arms up. “I don’t think it’s going to hurt anything if we’re all running on adrenaline this year. We can sleep Monday.”

“Jensen can’t. He and I have an errand to run on Monday.”

“Good luck with that,” Josephine says.

“Hey,” I say, looking directly at Petra. “Did you really just encourage me to spend time with Jensen?”

She smiles. “I must be getting soft in my old age.”

“What about packaging your soaps? And we never made the candles. Damn, time really did slip away.”

“You can wrap soaps tomorrow until your heart’s content. I’ll send you home with plenty of oils to make candles. Maybe you can start a side business.”

The reality of how short my time here is hits hard. Zara leaves Tuesday morning, and I leave on Friday. Next week is it.

I tell Petra I want to help with all the outside work in the morning, and then I’ll wrap her soaps in the afternoon. She waves me off when I tell her I’ll be able to help again on Friday. “No way. Zara is driving nine hours to see you. Spend Friday with your friend. The weekend will be over before you know it.”

Josephine says she’ll be available for whatever needs to be done. Petra thanks us both, and then she leaves.

I try not to read too much into anything, to not let my imagination get carried away.

“Are you a vendor at the festival?” It hadn’t occurred to me before to ask Josephine if she was doing tattoos here this weekend, but I assumed she would be.

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