Page 30 of Hello Stranger

“I picked up your prescriptions,” Lucinda said, like she’d done me a favor.

“Didn’t I tell you not to do that?”

But Lucinda was looking around. “It’s very… bohemian,” she said, like that was the nicest thing she could come up with.

“How did you get up here?” I demanded.

“Mr. Kim gave me the code.”

“You met Mr. Kim?”

She nodded, still looking around. “He kept calling me Martha Stewart.”

At that, I stifled a smile. Mr. Kim always had everybody’s number. I sighed. “That’s actually a great nickname for you.”

She considered that. Was she complimented or insulted?

Either way, I didn’t like seeing my worlds collide. “Don’t bother Mr. Kim, okay?” Mr. Kim, along with the whole Kim family, belonged to me.

But she wasn’t listening. “You live here?”

I could have lied, I guess. But maybe I was tired of lying. And it was hopeless anyway. She was here. It was what it was. “It’s temporary,” I said.

And then, with her trademark decisiveness, she pulled out her wallet, scanned down her credit cards, and took one out. “Take it,” she said.

“I don’t need it,” I said.

“Just take it,” she insisted. “Your dad will never know.”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“This one gives you points,” she said, waving it at me.

“So?”

“So every time you use it, we’re making money.”

“That is not how that works.”

But she gave me a wink. “Just use it. I do all the bills, anyway. I’ll never tell.”

How dare she act like I needed her?

I never needed anyone. Ever. For anything.

And the reason that was true? The reason I never let myself do a very simple thing likeneed other peoplethat the rest of humanity got to do all the time? That reason was standing right here in a hot-pink sweater.

I took hold of her shoulders and steered her toward the door. “I don’t need your help. And I don’t want you up here. And I’m changing the passcode. So go home, okay? And take your credit card with you.”

She didn’t fight me. She left without protest.

But it was only after I’d dead-bolted the door that I saw, on the table beside it, looking defiantly up at me… her credit card.

IT ONLY HITme, really, after I’d gotten rid of her.

My entire life up until now had been abefore.And now I was in the after.

I couldn’t see faces. Not even my own.

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