Page 7 of Hot Tea & Bird Calls

It wasn’t enough that she boasted a remote, well-paying work life. Or took time reflecting, meditating, adopting a moremindful lifestyle to find herself again. It flushed out the bad, even if it meant ridding herself of some softness, too.

“I’ll take him,” Shanice whispered, so closely it startled Celene. She’d been out of it. “Thanks for getting him back to sleep.”

“You’re welcome.”

Singing softly, Theo’s mother scooped him up, relaying him to Byron’s open arms. In his absence, Celene’s midsection went cold, and that made things worse. Any caffeine she’d ingested dissolved to nothing, leaving her drained. Lethargic, a touch angry.

Celene soon took leave for her hotel room, not remembering her trek down the white halls, from the elevator. She sat on the edge of her bed an hour later, wondering if she’d taken a devastatingly wrong turn in her thirty-six years. She’d finished packing and set out her outfit for her morning departure. So she thought and thought and buried herself under the covers so the thinking would stop.

How did her self-improvement help if she looked forward to nothing ahead?

The next day went smoothly.Hotel checkout, farewells. The adult Vales were all sleep-deprived, besides Donovan nursing a hangover while Isolde begged him for “one more go” at the ice machine.

Celene arrived at her Upper West Side one-bedroom. Answered emails and tied up some loose ends, despite reserving this Monday for rest.

Last night’s distress lived on. In fact, it’d intensified. That afternoon, she’d abandoned three novels in their first chapter,returning them to a plain cardboard box of unread books. Nothing held her interest. Everything annoyed her.

By 4:15 p.m., her head pounded. Not from a headache per se, but a heaviness. A sense of somethingwrong.

Celene gulped a glass of water, squeezing it with a clammy hand. For reasons she couldn’t quite name, her gaze drifted to the empty travel suitcase resting against the wall. In four long strides, she reached her dresser, then moved to the closet, pulling out enough clothes for several days. Nothing too flashy—athleisure, jeans, light blouses, a few pairs of shoes, the intimates. She folded everything into packing cubes as if she had a plan. And the facsimile of a plan, indeed, eased the distress. Celene kept going, placing toiletries until her phone buzzed.

She groaned. Emailing on her supposed day off incited a client to ‘touch base’ in person within the next hour. They offered double her rate, so she accepted.

In heels and a two-piece skirt set, she reached as far as her front door. Then she backtracked, rolled the small luggage out to the elevator, and headed to her car. She couldn’t explore why, but the heaviness reduced dramatically when she did.

One basic proposal later, Celene’s client team thanked her—payment secured, requests unproblematic. She’d sanitized her hands after all that handshaking, wished their receptionist a nice evening, and took the glass elevator down to the parking lot.

Unmoored again, she could order dinner and go to bed early, but...

Celene rested a hand on her gear shift, gliding a thumb over its curve.

Who was she kidding? She knew exactly where she needed to go. Clinging to denial gave her a fragile sense of control. It kept her from making a rash decision or ending up in a position where her family could take advantage of her again.

Regardless, she left the parking space and drove three hours to Yielding, PA, in the Poconos.

3

Around 10 p.m. Eastern Time, one of the worst things happened to Skye Florentine: she’d given her grandmother a reason to worry.

‘Head in the clouds,’ ‘zoning out,’ ‘on another planet.’ She’d lost count of the comments from authority and classmates alike, well into her thirties.

Since middle school—no, her homeschooled years. No, even toddlerhood. She’d squirmed through correction after correction, despite her parents’ attempts to insulate her with hugs and affirmations.

And she’d listened. Mostly.

Could a tiger change its stripes? Or, more suited for her last name, could a flower regenerate petals? Not really, but a woman could daydream less.

Off the side of the road, Skye had parked her grandma’s hybrid SUV hours prior. She could hardly see a few feet ahead of her. But she could feel. Skye palmed every door, yanking at stiff, metal handles.

Locked out.

Damn, Luce—what everyone called her grandmother—would really go in on her about this. Skye waved off most warnings because she’d lived this long as a mostly reformed space cadet.

Dreaming awake, preoccupied by her imagination. Mind elsewhere, to the stars, treetops, into other universes. It’d been a superpower in her childhood, as the moment boredom came knocking, she’d switch the channel in her mind and shift into a hawk, cutting through the wind instead of conjugating verbs. As she’d gained more obligations and revolutions on Earth, she’d suppressed the power. A good fix, though, were her short excursions.

Take tonight, for instance. Where Skye visited this long, winding backroad outside Yielding. She recalled foraging for the most flavorful blueberries somewhere around there, near the dense woods.

Life had been particularly demanding lately; this detour could lead to muffins, and who could deny that logic?