Page 70 of Rapunzel Is Losing It

“Maybe in three years.”

I let my phone drop next to the still spinning pen and turned to my computer.

Once I’d told Silas that I wasn’t doing his project, it felt like that red email dot had suddenly turned pink. Not at all threatening anymore.

There was more movement in the video than I expected. It wasn’t just me sitting at my desk and answering calls. But then it cut to the voice over of me talking about my mother, and the video showed her pictures lining my walls before panning out. It was a montage of my house. My rooms dissected on a micro level. There were detailed shots of the bits and bobs on my bookshelves, a close-up of my hands running over my furniture, a scenic moment of little dust particles dancing in the sun between my living room curtains. All accompanied by my voice, my memories of my mother.

My stomach somersaulted behind my belly button.

I was going to be sick.

“Cordelia?”I jogged up to the park bench, heart still racing. She’d dropped me her location. I’d been in the middle of rewatching the fight from last weekend with Yury when my phone had pinged with a fucking GPS signal.

I’d gone way over the speed limit to get here, assuming the worst.

Cordelia just lifted her head, her blonde hair cascading over a pale blue coat I’d seen Del wear a few times.

“Hi,” she whispered, the word escaping with a cloud of breath in the cold air. It had gotten unreasonably cold again with the ground freezing over last night. Of course that was the day she’d leave her perfectly heated house.

“What? How?” I turned from side to side to see if Del was here, or anyone else who might have gotten her out of the house. But it was only her. In the middle of this sad excuse of a park. She’d pulled her knees up to her chest, rolled up into a small ball on this random park bench. And her lips quivered as she looked up at me through watery eyes. “It’s okay. Come here.” I took a seat next to her, just to hoist her into my lap. Her entire body trembled, either from panic or from the cold. “What’s going on?”

“I was going to go for a walk and get ice cream.”

Sure. Car windows were freezing over but that would never keep Cordelia Montgomery from her ice cream. Her favorite shop to order from was twenty minutes in the other direction, but she’d made it halfway to the nearest ice cream parlor, which was only a ten minute walk from her house. “I see. Holy shit. You made it so far.”

“I can’t move.”

“What do you mean?”

“My feet are frozen. My legs are frozen. I just can’t. I can’t go back home. I can’t go get ice cream.”

I’d seen people paralyzed from one bad hit to the spine, so if she’d tripped or slipped on a frozen puddle... “Can you feel this?” I squeezed her calf, ice cold and only covered in some wool tights, but she nodded. I slid my hand further down and opened her boot to slip my fingers around her fuzzy-socked foot. “How about this?” She nodded again. Well, she wasn’t physically paralyzed at least.

“I feel silly,” she squeaked.

“You should feel proud. You made it really far.” I zipped her boot back up and pulled her hands into mine instead. “Jesus, Cordelia, your fingers are frozen.”

“I forgot gloves.”

“How long have you been sitting here?”

She shrugged.

“Do you want me to take you home?”

She shook her head.

“Do you want me to take you to the ice cream place?”

She shook her head again.

I leaned back to open my jacket to wrap her up in it too. She nestled into it. Her cold fingers slipped in under my shirt, seeking every bit of warmth she could get. This wasn’t quite how I’d imagined getting her hands on my bare skin.

“You smell good,” she mumbled.

I chuckled. “It’s the same aftershave you get me every year for Christmas.”

“I have good taste.”