Page 74 of Priceless
“Oh, no!”
“Oh, yeah. Got back on the grid yesterday, as scheduled. Tried to call you to give you my flight number. I was worried sick?—”
“My phone died.”
“Oh, yeah? When was the last time you had it?”
I shrugged.
“Laira. When did you turn off your phone?”
“This is the twenty-eighth?”
“Yep.”
I counted on my pruned fingers.The ceilidh was the thirteenth, train was three days later, so the sixteenth.“Twelve days ago…on the train.”
“What train?”
I winced. “The train from Inverness to Edinburgh.”
“Scotland?Youwent to Scotland?”
“Yeah. I…took a trip. Got out and stretched my legs. Made some…friends. Everything you hoped I would do, I did. Happy?” I reached for the tap and turned on the hot water.
Raina came over and turned it off. “If the water’s cold, it’s time to get out. Besides, you have something urgent you have to do.”
“Urgent?”
The last time someone had urgent news, it was about Jacob’s brother. If all that was true. Maybe he’d just needed a break from the farce…
The tears surprised me. I thought I was all out. They stung worse than the bubbles, so I turned my face to the wall and blinked hard.
“Yes, urgent. You have about five minutes to get dried and dressed, and then you’re going to tell me, while I clean the house,WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE!"
I hadn’t intendedto tell Raina anything, but she’d caught me in a vulnerable moment. Every time I told her something new that I’d remembered, she made me back up and start again. By the time the house was clean, she’d gotten most of my embarrassment out of me, even if it was all out of order.
We finally collapsed onto the couch. She still had a dishtowel over her shoulder, and she would probably leave it there, to remind me how hard she’d worked. It was surprising how cluttered a kitchen could get when no meals had been cooked for nearly two weeks.
“Tell me how it started again.”
I rolled my eyes and went back to the very beginning, to the minute I’d pulled that Bee Naked card out of my purse, until I took that walk through the neighborhood while dictating into my phone.
“But you sent it by text?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s bullshit. You must have been dictating into the AI app. Which one?”
“I’m telling you, I sent it by regular text.”
She groaned and pushed herself up again. “I’ll get your phone and show you.”
“I told you, it’s dead.”
“I found it under your bed and plugged it in.”
While she ducked down the hall, I got distracted by the jump in my heart rate. As long as that phone was off, I could stay calm. If there was any chance Jacob might call, I couldn’t breathe.
