Page 20 of Whispers and Wishes (Untouchable 4)

“Okay.” I let it go, since sometimes being quiet was the best we could do. “Let me know if that changes or you need anything, okay?”

“Deal.”

For the next couple of hours, we listened to music as I drove from restaurant to house or business, picking up and dropping off. Once I had the first two orders, they kept flowing in, and fortunately, it turned out to be a day that when I showed up, the food was ready rather than having to wait around.

Frankie watched with interest now and then, once she seemed like she’d gone to sleep, so I left her alone. But when one of my last stops turned out to be a barbecue place, her stomach growled so loud it echoed in the car.

“And I think on that note,” I informed her. “This will be my last delivery, and we’ll grab lunch on the way back.”

“I can go a little longer,” she insisted. But really? This was Frankie. She could redefine hangry if she went too long when she was hungry. She’d also not had any pain meds today, and the lines around her mouth was tight. “You’ve been really busy and getting good tips.”

“And I’m happy with the fifty I’ve made so far,” I told her. “I can afford to grab us some lunch.”

Her sigh tugged at me.

“You want to go somewhere and eat? We don’t have to go back to the apartment.” Maybe she was just sick of being inside?

“Could we? Archie drove me around the lake, but maybe we could go find a picnic table or something?” She glanced down at herself. She didn’t have on real pants, but the old boxers covered everything.

“I’ll find us somewhere. Pick what you wanna eat.”

The surge of excitement in her expression gave me wings. She was sick of being trapped inside. Frankie was an active person. Okay. We could fix this. It took me fifteen minutes to get the last order delivered, and she’d picked Korean barbecue—not a shock considering by the time I got to that placeIwas ready to eat their food. I logged off and then turned us back around.

She looked a little pale by the time we had the food in the car, and I flipped open one of the boxes and offered her the edamame. “Munch while I find us a place to eat.”

The lake would be the obvious choice, but I had a better idea. Somewhere that also wouldn’t be heavily populated this time of day. She didn’t want to see people, she just wanted to be outside. So I cut across town and past flag pole hill toward the Pennywhistle Park. It had been a little amusement place for kids back in the day, but since it closed, they’d cleared a lot of the area and tried to fix up the outdoor park. Still, no one hung out there—at least, not that I’d ever seen.

But there were picnic tables and trees and quiet and sunshine. So I navigated around the old dilapidated building and parked under an oak tree. In the spring, that thing shed pollen like mad, but the leaves hadn’t even begun to turn colors yet. Our autumn wouldn’t really hit until sometime in November. While they counted snowflakes up north, we might get some rain and eventually colorful trees.

I could count on the fingers of one hand how often we got snowhere. Anyway, Frankie let out a little laugh as she glanced around. “Okay, this place is creepy when deserted.”

“Yeah, but it’s daytime, so not scary creepy, right?” ’Cause if it was scary, fuck that, we’d go somewhere else.

“No, not scary. Kind of weird though.” She opened her door after I shut off the car, and slid her feet into her shoes before climbing out. I snagged my drink and the bag of food while she grabbed hers. It wasn’t hot, if anything, it was actually a nice day. Warm, breezy, and sunny. The humidity didn’t suck.

Mouth widened into a yawn, she broke off with a laugh, then cast me an apologetic look. “Sorry.”

“Nope, you can be sleepy. We just drove around for hours. Mom used to do that with Sis when she was little, remember?”

“Vaguely,” Frankie said. “I remember you complaining mostly that you had to ride around in the car and be quiet, and you’d get bored.”

Yeah. That sounded like me.

I shrugged and nodded toward the picnic table. There was playground equipment not that far away. It had been there since we were kids. Though they’d definitely upgraded some of it. “It was boring, but it made her go to sleep, which was the point.”

Spreading out our feast, I let her pick where she wanted to sit and then nodded to the spot next to her.

She grinned and patted the bench. Good, better to be invited than to hover more. We’d gotten a little bit of everything, but Frankie’s favorite was the beef bulgogi, so I got that out for her first and passed her a plastic fork before I dug into my barbecue chicken. When she offered me a bite of hers, I traded with a bite of mine.

“You remember when we used to come here?” She motioned toward the old building with its mini-amusement park inside, or what had been a mini-amusement park. At five and six, that place had beenawesome. We had to be good to come, too. My mom brought us a lot.

“Yeah, I remember,” I told her. “I was kind of sad when they closed it.”

“We were twelve,” she reminded me. “We’d already outgrown it.”

“Sure, but you don’t miss it? It was fun.”

“A little, but I kind of like going to the bigger amusement parks with you now.”

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