Chapter Twenty-Three

THEY REALLY HAD STAYED TOO LONG—IT WOULD BE nearly dark when they got back—but they’d kept finding reasons to stay. To linger in the empty cabin, holding hands, or laughing at memories of Laurel’s childhood, or stealing just one more kiss—one kiss that turned into two, then ten, then twenty. She knew that once they left the cabin, everything would get complicated again. But for those few hours, in the empty house with no electricity, phone, internet, or television, the world was theirs alone.

But they couldn’t keep night from falling. She had considered just staying—she was safe at the cabin, maybe even safer than at home. But though it was Tamani’s job to keep her safe, it was her job to keep her family safe. And she couldn’t do that from fifty miles away. Besides, her parents were probably worried. By the time she had collected herself enough to remember that Tamani had a cell phone, they were in separate cars, headed back to Crescent City.

The drive went much too quickly and soon she was within a few blocks of her house. She looked in her rearview mirror and waved at Tamani as he peeled off and headed to his apartment, watching his taillights until they disappeared. It was only when someone honked behind her that she realized she’d been sitting at a green light.

Stars were peeking out behind the clouds by the time Laurel pulled into her driveway. She was going to be in so much trouble. Her mom’s car was in the garage, though it didn’t look like her dad was home yet. Pocketing her keys, Laurel attempted to sneak into the house and was immediately foiled by her mother sitting in the front room sipping a cup of tea and reading a gardening magazine.

Laurel shut the door behind her. “Um, hi,” Laurel finally said.

Her mom studied her for a minute. “I got an interesting call from the school’s attendance office today.”

Laurel cringed on the inside. She busied herself with loosening her petals from their silken bonds.

“You were absent from all your afternoon classes.”

The speech she’d planned all the way home evaporated. So she remained silent. A single petal came free with her scarf, and Laurel wondered if she would lose them all tonight, or if this one had been jarred loose by the day’s activities.

“And then you walk in after seven o’clock on a school night—with no word whatsoever—and your eyes are sparkling like I haven’t seen them in weeks,” she finished, her voice soft.

“I’m sorry I worried you,” Laurel said, trying to sound sincere while suppressing a smile. Her apology was sincere, but a guilty smile would undermine that.

“I wasn’t worried for long,” her mom said, swinging her legs over the side of the couch. “I’m a quick learner. I went out to the backyard and talked to your sentry friend, Aaron.”

Laurel’s eyes widened. “You talked to Aaron?”

“He told me Tamani checked in at about noon and told them you were safe with him. So I stopped worrying.”

“That was enough to make you stop worrying?”

“Well, I stopped worrying about your safety, anyway. I saw the look in that boy’s eyes the other night. There’s no way he would let anything happen to you.”

That grin she just couldn’t stop curled back onto her face.

“Don’t think that gets you off the hook though; you’re still in trouble. We’ll talk punishment when your father gets home.” She sobered now. “Seriously, Laurel. What were you thinking? Does David know where you are?”

Laurel’s face fell and she shook her head.

“Is he at home worried sick?”

“Probably.” She felt awful.

“Did you want to call him?”

She shook her head in a stiff, jerky way.

“Oh.” Then a long pause. “Come in the kitchen,” she said finally, pulling gently on Laurel’s arm. “I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

As far as her mom was concerned, tea fixed everything. Have a cold? Have some tea. Broken bones? There’s tea for that too. Somewhere in her mother’s pantry, Laurel suspected, was a box of tea that said, In case of Armageddon, steep three to five minutes.

Laurel sat on a barstool and watched as her mom fixed her a cup of tea, then stirred in ice cubes until it was cool.

“I noticed you losing a petal there,” her mom said conversationally. “Would you mind if I preserved a few? They really smell fantastic. I bet I could make a killer potpourri.”

“Um, sure,” Laurel said, trying not to feel too weird about her mom making something out of her petals.

“You get rained on much today?”

“A bit.”

“Well,” Laurel’s mom said after spooning some sugar into the tea, just the way Laurel liked it, “that’s all the small talk I’ve got. Are you going to tell me what happened?”

Laurel put it off just a few more seconds as she sipped her tea. “David and Tamani got in a fight at lunch. A fistfight. Over me,” she finally said.

“David? Really?”

“I know, right? But they’ve been angry and mopey lately. And there have been little confrontations the last couple weeks. I guess they just blew up today.”

Her mom was smiling now. “I never had two boys fight over me.”

“You say that like it’s fun. It’s not fun!” Laurel protested. “It was awful. I broke up the fight, but it was just too much. So I left.”

“And . . . Tamani followed you?”