Page 18 of Every Broken Promise
I just looked at her, trying to figure out what she meant by that.
“My name,” she added. “So, you and Astrid finally got together?”
“What?” I whooshed, feeling like I got sucker punched.
“That’s her name, right? She was my partner in cooking class. One day, I missed school, and she had the whole fire department there for burning a fucking tortilla trying to make a quesadilla. You two were freshmen, and every day you walked her to cooking class.”
“It’s for her,” I told her in a low tone, trying to wrap my head around what she said.
“I’ll do it just because I owe her one.”
That was news to me, and before I could question her further, she turned around and went to the back.
When I had everything, I made my way back to my truck. The twinkling lights on the tarot shop caught my attention. My eyes then went to the card of the day. The window display was like opening a fortune cookie with a much more cryptic message.
The black-and-gold foiled card was taped at the top.The Wheel of Fortune.
The brief description read:The wheel is always turning. Trust the universe to take care of you. Be open to the changes that are to come.
At this point, I was willing to take any help I could get, and if the universe was going to help me make shit right with Astrid, then I was going to hold on to that.
EIGHT
Men in power sucked.
Every day, I had to talk myself out of punching Ronnie, the newspaper chief editor, in the mouth. Hell, I really wanted to kick him in the balls.
At first, he seemed nice and charming. You know, the kind of charming that was a tad bit slimy, and it just felt icky whenever he was nice to you? No one else was talking about his vibe, so I kept my mouth shut because I was probably being paranoid.
Besides Ronnie being a guy, things have been settling nicely. I mean, it’s not like I gave life the option to screw me over. I slept, got ready, came to work, and did it all over again.
Not running into anyone in a small town was surprisingly easy if you didn’t go out and had no life.
It’s not like I was just sitting at home resting on my laurels. To succeed in journalism, one needed to have good research skills, but most of all, one needed sources. I had yet to embrace my town, so on that end, I was screwed. Lucky for me, my parents worked at the Dunnetts’ factory along with a lot of people from the surrounding towns, so it was a hub of information—information my parents liked to discuss over dinner.
I loved small talk.
Old people loved their online neighborhood groups. They posted the most random things there, and I had my mom join on my behalf. Every night after dinner, I would go over posts and comments for a good twenty minutes. It sounded creepy, but I was gathering information.
The last thing that took a hit on my savings was buying a doorbell camera and joining their subscription. Not everyone around had one, but the people who did liked to post about random things their cameras caught or noises they heard. All of that information on its own seemed random and inconsequential, but man, having all the pieces was like putting a puzzle together.
Most of it was innocent, like someone a few blocks down complaining they heard weird noises around three a.m., and then the next day, someone said they lost their kitty—said kitty would be caught on tape.
Twice now, there has been a car caught driving down a road really fast—too fast for the camera to show us any real info. The journalist in me was dying to know who it was and why they were doing that.
I stared at the blank page in my Word document when the chair in the cubby next to mine moved. Oriana, my newest friend, had just walked in.
Because of the few people who had Ring doorbell cameras, police cars were captured heading down the main road toward the outskirts of Sunny Pines, paired with my daddy hearing that the stripper’s joint had gotten raided, it was hard not to put together.
Especially not when Ori was going after the mayor of this town.
“Girl,” I smiled at her, “please tell me that you caused all that commotion the other day in Sunny Pines.”
Her face blanched, and for a reporter, she needed to work better on her poker face. I knew most of my coworkers thought they were better than me just because I was currently stuck reporting on what was essentially a gossip column. I didn’t care what they thought, a job was a job, and in this economy, I would gladly report on fucking cattle if it meant getting my bills paid.
“What?” she squeaked.
I waved my hand dismissingly at her. “I just know because I have sources.”
