Page 33 of The Gravity of Us (Elements 4)

“I said go, Parker. I have nothing to say, and I want nothing to do with you. Now just leave.”

He hesitated for second before he placed the flowers down on the counter and left.

The moment the door shut, Mari released the breath she’d been holding, and I hurried to the back room.

“What are you doing?” she called after me.

“Getting the sage stick,” I hollered back. When we were kids, Mama kept a sage stick in our house that she’d burn whenever there was an argument of any kind. She always said fights brought bad energy to a space, and it was best to clear it out right away. “There’s nothing good about Parker’s energy, and I refuse to let his negativity seep into our lives again. Not today, Satan.” I lit the sage and walked through the shop, waving it.

“Speaking of Satan,” Mari mentioned, picking up my cell phone when it started ringing.

I reached over for it, and Graham’s name flashed across the screen.

Warily, I answered, passing the sage stick to my sister. “Hello?”

“The chair doesn’t work.”

“What?”

“I said the chair doesn’t work. You told me she liked the gliding chair, and that’s how you got her to sleep, but it’s not working. I’ve been trying all morning, and she won’t sleep. She’s hardly eating and…” His words dropped off for a moment before he softly spoke again. “Come back.”

“Excuse me?” I leaned against the counter, flabbergasted. “You shoved me out of your house.”

“I know.”

“That’s all you can say? That you know?”

“Listen, if you don’t want to come help, fine. I don’t need you.”

“Yes, you do. That’s why you’re calling.” I bit my bottom lip and closed my eyes. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“Okay.”

Again, not a thank you.

“Lucille?”

“Yes?”

“Make it fifteen.”

Lucy pulled up to my house in her beat-up burgundy car, and I opened the door before she even climbed out of her vehicle. I held Talon in my arms, rocking her as she cried from discomfort.

“That was twenty-five minutes,” I scolded her.

She just smiled. She was always smiling.

She had a smile that reminded me of my past, a beautiful smile filled with hope.

Hope was the weak man’s remedy to life’s issues.

I only knew that was true from the past I’d lived.

“I like to call it fashionably late.”

The closer she got, the tenser I became. “Why do you smell like weed?”

She laughed. “It’s not weed, it’s sage. I was burning it.”