Page 121 of Resurrection
"Not anymore."
Adri sighs and heads over to the pot to pour himself a mug as I rush to get ready for the day.
Sometimes, I wonder if God gave me an older brother to be my rock in a time of need or to test my patience.
Work keeps me busy at first, keeps my head occupied, but eventually, the image of Ty invades every corner of my mind. The man himself shows up around eleven to drop off the keys for my Subaru. I meet him out back, and he immediately draws me closer and kisses me like I’m his oxygen.
"Come on." I push at his chest gently. "Someone could see us."
"So?"
"You haven’t seen what’s happening online?" I ask him.
"No."
"Well, you should."
Tyler Brady is an Instagram and TikTok sensation today. All the videos recorded last night at the talent show have been making the social media rounds all night and all morning. And this extra attention from the press isn’t something I need.
"That bad?" Ty chuckles.
"Well, you can probably expect crowds of fanboys and groupies flooding Palm Springs this weekend in hopes of seeing you. And that isn’t what I want right now…while this—us—is still so new."
"Understood." He nods but kisses me anyway before taking off when his Uber pulls up.
As soon as lunch is over, the Oasis is dead. The casino crowd is in hibernation until happy hour, the kitchen is cleaner than the day it opened, and Sonia is leaning against a shelf, scrolling on her phone with the kind of focus that says she's in the middle of a group-chat war. The only sound is the soft whirr of the espresso machine doing its self-cleaning cycle.
There’s not much to do except for inventory, which takes only twenty minutes. I handle the dry storage first, then the freezer and the cooler. When I’m about to finish, I crack the walk-in door with my shoulder and stick my head out.
"I'm taking off after deliveries," I call.
I’ve been anxious all morning. There hasn’t been any news about the Stone family, and even though Asher’s gone along with his parents, I don’t trust that they won’t get him in trouble. I’ve heard too many bad things about the couple.
Sonia’s head pops up. "Going somewhere good?"
I hold up a to-go sack with some deli meats, veggies, and a quart of rice pudding. "Charity drop-off in the mountains." Not technically a lie. I do plan to deliver the food to someone in need. Or at least, that’s my excuse. It just happens that I have no idea if the recipient will be home, and I’m making up the rest as I go.
Sonia narrows her eyes at me, then lets it go. "You don’t need to bribe me," she says, snorting. "If it’s about the missing kid, just say so."
There’s a smile on her lips, the kind that means she saw right through myplan before I even had one. For all her tough talk, Sonia’s a marshmallow. I think she keeps me around for entertainment.
"It’s not just about the kid," I hedge. "But…yeah, mostly the kid."
"I can handle dinner. This week has been fairly slow. Go be a hero." She waves me off, already sucked back into her phone. "But don’t come crawling to me when you hit a coyote on the way up the mountain."
"Or a mountain lion," I add.
She grins without looking up. "One less liability on payroll."
"But I’m the one handling payroll," I tease her.
"Whatever, boss lady. Go now."
I shake my head and take the back exit, where a blast of dry heat hits me like a pizza oven set to inferno. I place the food onto the back seat of my car and slide behind the wheel, then nudge the AC to max and punch in the address I have saved in my phone.
The drive from Sageview proper to Eagle Creek is only seven miles, but the last two are all uphill, and each turn brings you closer to nowhere. The neighborhood itself hardly has any stoplights, just a couple of lonely properties hiding in the trees. My destination is a small trailer park on the border of town and the stretch of land managed by the National Park Service.
I get halfway up before my phone loses its signal. There’s no radio, no music, just the thrum of the engine and the sound of my doubts knocking around in my skull. I think about Asher, the way he never talked about home, the weird pauses in his speech, how he flinched whenever you mentioned parents.
