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him. She could barely comprehend what he’d said to her when she’d

walked in, and her mom and sister had gone to get a cup of coffee.

“Coffee…” Arabella latched onto that. “Do you want a cup?”

“I…”

“I know it’s not exactly coffee hour, but I feel like it’s the least I could do

after you waited at the hospital for so long and drove me all this way. I can’t

thank you properly. I can’t even come up with the words. Maybe a

mediocre cup of java will do the trick. Or maybe at least it will jog my brain

and I’ll be able to come up with something. Some words that are even

close.”

June pressed the button on the dash that shut off the car. “Okay.”

Arabella hadn’t expected an agreement, and she was flooded with panic

thinking about all the things wrong with the house. She hid it well, gulping

down her pride like she’d done over the past few years. She let herself out

of the car and walked to the side door. She was glad it was dark and hoped

that June, who followed a few feet behind her, wouldn’t notice the trim

missing on the house, the eaves half falling off the side of the garage, the

paint peeling all along the same side, or the sagging backyard fence. The

place might be just shy of depressing, and it needed a lot of work that her

mom didn’t know how to do and her dad, well, her dad hadn’t been doing

much of anything.

Arabella thrust open the door and flicked on the light inside. The house

was anything but open concept. The bungalow was small and outdated, but

at least she kept things meticulously clean. She’d been able to save a lot of

her parent’s furniture from when their house was foreclosed on and so the

furnishings were much nicer than their surroundings. She tried to avoid

thinking that it was like putting lipstick on a pig.

“This is nice,” June said politely.

Arabella gave her props for always being so nice, because it really

sounded like she meant it.