The mug shook in my hands, sending the hot liquid sloshing around. Fortunately, she hadn’t filled it to the tippy top, or I’d have wound up with burns on top of my bruises. Scalded and frozen. What a morning, and the sun hadn’t even been up that long.
Thinking of the sun, I looked out the window and nearly dropped the mug when I saw that it was a clear, bright day. Sunlight sparkled off the pools of water left by the melting hail. The poor lawn. It looked like a herd of moose had hosted a kegger on it.
“Yeah, it’s a mess,” Zo said. “I’ll fix it. Stop gawking and drink your tea.”
I took a big sip of the tea and choked as it blazed its way down my throat. When I stopped coughing, I glared at her. “Is that whiskey?”
She was grinning. “Drink up.”
The first sip was already making me feel warmer. I took another sip. “Whiskey for breakfast. Sure, why not.” I couldn’t seem to get my brain to work right, so I concentrated on sipping my tea. As I drank, my shivering slowed, then stopped, and the pounding in my head receded to a dull thumping.
I peered into the mug and saw some tea leaves at the bottom, and a bunch of stuff floating in the last of the tea. I looked up at her. “What did you put in here?”
“You mean besides the whiskey? Just some herbs to help with your head. Feeling better now?”
“Actually, yes.” I swallowed the last of the tea and reached to set my cup down, but she took it from my hand. She peered into the cup, turning it this way and that, frowning in concentration.
“Uh, are you reading my tea leaves?” I asked.
“And if I am?”
“Cool!” I winced, making a note to keep my enthusiasm turned down to a five or lower. I saw her eyes widen, but before I could tell if it was surprise or alarm, she smoothed her face out. “What? See anything interesting?”
She kept her expression blank. “Mmmm. Hard to say.” She put the cup down, then put Fuzzy down on the floor. As he wandered around the kitchen, she came over to me, took a quick look at my head, then said, “You’re definitely going to need to see a doctor for that. I’ll give it another minute to let the tea do its thing, then we’ll take you to get stitched up.”
She moved around the kitchen, grabbing a purse and keys, and pulling out a cell phone and sending a text. Fuzzy padded over and stared up at her. Looking down at him, she said, “You can hang out here while we’re gone.”
“Thank you so much,” I said.
“No problem.” She set out a dish of water and some cat food for him. She opened a door at the end of the kitchen, and Fuzzy went to investigate. “Litterbox is in here,” she said to him.
“Do you have a cat? The way you talk to Fuzzy like he’s a person makes me think you have a cat. Well that and all the cat stuff.”
“He’s outside at the moment,” she said. “Don’t worry. He won’t bother Fuzzy. But to keep Fuzzy out of trouble, I’ll shut him in the kitchen while we’re gone.” She looked down at Fuzzy. “There’s lots of good napping spots in here. So you just curl up and behave yourself.”
Fuzzy blinked at her.
Her phone beeped. She read the message and said, “My friend the doc said to come right over. Time to go.”
I groaned and said, “I can’t believe I’m going to need stitches. Meg’s gonna kill me for disrupting her schedule…Meg’s in the house down the road—”
“I know who Meg is.”
“I can tell from your tone that you’re another huge fan of the Fosters. Well full disclosure, I’m also a Foster. Distantly. But still a Foster.”
She raised an eyebrow and glanced at her lawn. “No kidding.”
“Why are you looking at the lawn? It’s not like I made it hail.”
“Well of course you didn’t,” she said, looking exasperated. She came over and pulled the blanket from around my shoulders. I was startled to realize I was dry.
“Let’s get going,” she said.
I stood up, and the thumping in my head increased.
Zo looked me over. “You okay to travel?”
“The room’s a bit tilty, but I’m getting on a ship in a couple of weeks, so I’m trying to think of this as good practice for walking around when the sea is pitching.”
She gave me a look and shook her head. “Whatever works.”
She led me out of the kitchen into a garage and got me tucked into her car. There were a bunch of beads and charms hanging from her rearview mirror. They reminded me of some of the beads my mom had draped inside of Babs. Longing swamped me, so intense that my eyes teared up. I would’ve given anything in that moment to be able to call my mom or dad and tell them about the crazy morning I’d had, to have them come with me while I got stitches.
Zo climbed into the other side of the car, took one look at my teary eyes, and began digging around in her purse and muttering. She must’ve thought my head was killing me because she pulled out an enormous pair of sunglasses and said, “Put these on. They’ll help keep your headache down to a dull roar.”
They were leopard print. And had rhinestones. I put them on anyway. “Thanks,” I said. She was right. As soon as I had them in place, they seemed to help my head. The light must’ve been bothering me more than I thought. I shuddered to think how I would’ve felt outside in the bright sunlight without them.
She also dug another set of beads out of her bag and added them to the ones hanging around the mirror.
“Those are pretty,” I said. “My mom had a whole bunch in her car, too. I still have them hanging in there.”
“You don’t say,” she said and started the car.
We pulled out of the garage into a beautiful sunny morning. Unfortunately, the sunlight just served to highlight the devastation.
I gasped as I took in the wreckage. “Holy shit.”
The driveway led away from the side of the house, so we hadn’t been able to see this part of the damage from the kitchen. Zo stopped the car. Her hands were white on the steering wheel, her mouth compressed into a flat line.
It looked like someone had bombed her yard. She’d lined the driveway all the way to the road with a complex series of beds. About an hour ago, it must have been beautiful. Now the plants and shrubs were shredded, bent, torn, and in some places, snapped in half.
She shut off the car, got out, and stomped down a path to the back of the house. I followed her. I caught up to her at the back corner of the house, where she’d stopped and was looking out over an enormous garden. I let out a breath when I realized the garden hadn’t been touched. In fact, it looked like the hail had stopped right at the edge of the back of the house. So while the front and sides had been blasted, the back had been spared entirely.
“That’s weird,” I said.
Zo turned around and strode back to the car.
I scrambled to follow her, chattering as I climbed back into the car. “I mean, good that your garden’s okay. But just weird that the hail stopped like that, like it hit a wall,” I said, shutting the car door.
Zo looked at the ceiling of the car, shook her head, and started driving down the driveway.
As we passed the ruined beds, I looked at them, winced, and said, “Wow. I am so sorry. What a mess. Look, I’m only here for the weekend, but I can come over tomorrow and help you get started on replanting and repairing some of this, if you want. I’m pretty good with plants.” I twisted around in my seat to get a better look. “And I’m pretty sure we can salvage at least some of them.”
She glanced over at me, eyebrows raised. “You actually mean that, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Well. That’s a kind offer. But what about your Foster family obligations?”
“What obligations? Oh, right, Meg’s schedule. Well, she can’t have scheduled every minute of the weekend. I mean, it’s a reunion not a business conference, and to be honest, you can barely call it a reunion—there’s only a few of us.”
“A reunion?”
“Well, when I got here, Meg did say it
was more of an, uh,” I did my best Meg voice, “‘intimate soiree,’ but yeah.” I rambled on for a few minutes, explaining about the invitation and my curiosity about my family.
When I wound down, she was silent a moment. Then she said, “I need to think.”
I took that as a “Shut up, Finn.” I was glomming onto the fact that Zo wasn’t a big talker. Well, at least she was taking good care of me, for which I was really grateful. I decided to give her the space she’d asked for, and spent the rest of the car ride in silence.
Chapter Sixteen
Zo took the same main road I’d been on earlier, but instead of going left toward the Foster house and the strip mall with the pub, she turned right toward the vet.
As we drove, the houses got closer and closer together, and more strip malls and businesses dotted the roadway. I recognized the vet’s office as we drove past it.
After about 15 minutes, the houses and businesses were shoulder-to-shoulder, and we reached the downtown area. What I thought of as a town square marked the center of town, but the sign called it a town “common,” which seemed adorably New Englandy to me. It had a big grassy lawn, large shade trees with benches under them, and a big white gazebo in the middle. The common was bordered on all four sides by various businesses and restaurants. Some of the buildings looked really old, like the brick might have been there since the town was founded. Despite my current physical state, I was charmed by the old brick buildings and lovely common.
The road we were on was one of four that led into the town’s center. Zo wove her way around downtown until she parked in an alleyway a couple of blocks from the town square, behind a building that looked like it might have been a house at one point.
“We’re here,” she said. She led me up the stairs and in the back door. We stepped into the hallway, and I could tell by the antiseptic smell that we were in the doctor’s office.
A woman with caramel skin and long, dark hair approached us. She was wearing a white lab coat.
“Zo,” she said. Then she turned her attention to me and gave me a smile and offered her hand, “Hi, I’m Dr. Paige Alexander. Most people just call me Dr. Paige, though.”
“Hi, I’m Finn.” I shook her hand.
“Let’s go in here, and I’ll have a look at you.” She motioned me into an exam room. “Zo, you can wait in my office, if you like.”
Zo nodded, said, “I’ve got some calls to make,” and walked away down the hallway, cell phone in hand.
The doc followed me into the exam room and closed the door behind us. “I see that you’re limping a little.”
“What? Oh, huh. Yeah, my knee’s a bit sore, I guess from when I fell on it.” I laughed a little. “Wow, I didn’t even notice, I’ve been so focused on my head.”
“It’s hurting?”
I nodded. “I’m not as woozy as I was, but the thumping is getting worse again.”
“Well, hop on up and let me have a look.”
I climbed up on the table, and Dr. Paige donned a pair of latex gloves. The snapping sound made me wince.
She noticed and gave me a reassuring smile as she approached. “I’ll be gentle, I promise. Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
She was true to her word, and it didn’t hurt that much as she poked and prodded my head, as I explained, “I got caught in a sudden storm and got hit in the head with a big chunk of hail.”
“Hail? Really.” She stopped poking and stepped back to look at me. “Zo’s right. You need some stitches.” She checked my knee. “Well, the good news is that you don’t need stitches in your knee. But, you’ve got a bad scrape and a big bruise forming, and it’s going to be really sore later.”
The doc walked over to a counter and pulled out a syringe, a vial, and some other supplies. “So what brings you to our little town?” she asked.
“I’m here for a family reunion.” I looked over at her filling the syringe. “I feel like I should confess that I’m a Foster, if Zo didn’t already tell you. Given how people seem to react to that name, I’m really hoping it doesn’t affect the size of that needle you’re looking to jam in my scalp.” I cringed as she approached. “Would it help if I said I was distantly related?”
She smiled and stood next to me. “I’m a doctor. I work on everyone. Even the occasional Foster. Like Zo, I tend to be neutral in these matters. Little pinch…”
She leaned toward my head, and I closed my eyes, grabbing onto my necklace for dear life. “Neutral? You make it sound like there’s a war—OW!”
“Nearly done. Okay.” She patted my shoulder. “That’s the worst part. Now everything will be nice and numb. I’m going to clean the cut and put in the stitches. Then I’ll bandage your knee.”
As she started stitching she said, “In answer to your question, no, there’s not a war, per se…well, not a war-war. More of a cold war. Didn’t your family tell you? Basically, it’s a small town, old families, not everyone gets along…. So, some of us like to be clear we’re neutral. Speaking of families, is there anyone you want me to call for you? Did you want me to call your parents to come on over from the reunion?”
A vision of my parents walking through the door, all worried about me, swam before me. It was so visceral, I could feel them in the room. Then it evaporated. I jerked and sucked in a breath.
Dr. Paige stopped stitching. “Did you feel that? Is this hurting?”
“No. Sorry, I’ll try to hold still. And, uh, no. No need to call anyone. I’m here alone.” I cleared my throat and made a conscious effort to get rid of the raspy, choked up edge to my voice. “Speaking of which, since I’m leaving day after tomorrow for school, will I need to go see a doctor to get these out?”
“Nope. I’m using dissolving stitches that will go away on their own. But I would like to see you on Monday, before you go, to make sure everything is healing properly.” Then she added, “So, tell me about school.” When I explained where I was going she asked, “Why the sea?”
“You mean other than the fact that it’s not the desert?” I asked.
She smiled. “Lots of places aren’t the desert.”
“True,” I said. Something in her manner made her easy to talk to, so I decided to give her a real answer. “Well, I’m dying to spend some time on the water. But really, I guess what it comes down to is that it’s a big adventure. I get to travel and explore and discover new things.”
“You mean like discovering other cultures?”
“That’s part of it. I’ve always been fascinated with where people are from and the different ways they do things. My family had a diner—you wouldn’t believe the array of characters we had wandering through there.”
“I’ll bet.”
“But it’s more than that. In the ocean, there’s a real possibility that I’ll get to encounter things we didn’t even know existed. Did you know that they’re constantly discovering new species in the ocean? You’d think by now, we’d know all about the planet we’re living on. But the ocean, it’s like an undiscovered country. Who knows what else we’re going to find.”
“Holding out hope for a mermaid or two?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of a funky jellyfish or a giant squid, but I wouldn’t mind finding me some nice, chiseled mermen.”
We both laughed, and she said, “Okay, all done. Let me just bandage your knee, and you’re out of here.”
After she’d finished, I hopped down, and she walked me out the door. “I wouldn’t play any rugby if I were you, but other than that you should be fine. You can take over-the-counter painkillers for all the aching. In fact, I’d take some as soon as you eat something.”
“Thanks, Dr. Paige.”
“You’re welcome. Follow me. I’ll take you to Zo.”
As I followed her down the hallway, I said, “Don’t you need me to fill out some paperwork? And pay you?”
“The office isn’t actually open. We’ll deal with all that when you come back on Monday.” She opened a door and gestured me to
go in, saying, “They’re in here.”
“Who’s they?” I asked. I looked into the office. Zo was there, but so were Lou, Pete, and a really cute red-headed guy I’d never seen before. Dr. Paige went in ahead of me, and I hovered in the open doorway.
Zo looked at the doc. “You’re staying?”
Dr. Paige shrugged. “I like her. I’ll referee if needed.”
Well, that didn’t sound good. I said, “Why do I need a referee?”
Dr. Paige said, “Why don’t you come in and sit down, Finn.”
Instead of sitting, I stayed where I was. My heart rate kicked up, and I was feeling uneasy.
“She looks kind of peaky,” said Lou. “Have you had anything to eat?” he asked me.
“No.”
“That settles it,” said Pete. “Let’s go get some breakfast.”
“Is that a good idea?” asked Zo.
The cute guy said, “What are they going to do? Make a scene in the middle of town?”
I raised my hand. “Do I get a say in this?” I looked at Lou and Pete. “And why do you want to have breakfast with me? You don’t even like me!”
Lou and Pete both looked a little bit embarrassed.
Zo sighed. “Finn, just bear with us. It’s important.”
“But I already have breakfast plans.” I glanced at the clock over the doc’s desk. It was 8:30. I was supposed to meet the Foster historical council person this morning, and I had the feeling that Meg would have a fit if I mucked up her plans. Not that I wanted to meet anyone. I was sore all over, and I just wanted to crawl back into bed.
Dr. Paige gave me a solemn look. “I really think you should eat something so we can get some painkillers in you before the numbing agent wears off. And you definitely need to hear what we have to say before you go back to that house.”
The way she said “that house” made me wonder if she knew something about the house’s special nature. I looked at Zo. “But what about Fuzzy?”
“He’ll be fine, I promise.”
“I need to call Meg,” I hedged.
Lou, Pete, and Cute Guy exchanged looks, but Zo grinned. “Oh, please do. Want to use my phone?”
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