Page 119 of The Sister's Curse

I let my heartbeat settle, then called for a tow truck. We returned to the scene of the accident and circled the vehicle, inspecting it for damage.

Looked like I’d broken a wheel, crumpled a front fender, andlost a taillight and a headlight. Plus some dents. And I was sure that there was invisible damage.

Fuck.

I had a sneaking suspicion that the insurance company was gonna consider it totaled. Good thing I’d been paranoid enough at the car rental counter to buy all the extra insurance.

Gibby peed on a flat tire.

“Yeah, I think it’s dead, too, Gibby.”

—

I didn’t get home until after midnight. I had Patrol carefully document the accident, and it took some doing to haul my poor rental out of the ditch.

Deputy Detwiler had come out to take my statement. “Are you okay, El-Tee?” he asked, frowning. At least he didn’t look upon me with pity or ask me about my suspension.

“I’m okay, Detwiler.” I told him that it might be fruitful to compare paint scrapings from whoever hit me to cars on the Lister lot. Detwiler didn’t have much authority, but he’d try his best to make sure that the right thing was done.

Poor kid. Believing in the right thing was hard these days. I wasn’t sure I even knew what the right thing was anymore.

The tow driver dropped me off at the end of my drive, so Gibby and I walked home in the dark. The moon was high overhead, nearly full, and tree frogs sang all around us.

I was tired. Really fucking tired. I was sore, and tired of the old boys’ club. Somebody had tried to hurt me, and, worse, they’d tried to hurt my dog. Maybe Nick was right, and I needed to find something else to do for a living, before this bullshit caught up with me. Maybe I should resign before this investigation landed me injail. They wanted me out of the way; I could oblige. Maybe if I got out of their way, they wouldn’t charge me with anything.

The porch light was on, and Nick was sitting on the porch steps, drinking a beer.

“Hey,” I said limply.

“Rough day?”

“You have no idea.” I sat down beside him. Nick stood to turn off the porch light, which was attracting bugs, and Gibby plunked down at my feet, on the bottom step. The humid shadow of the forest sang around us, cicadas and crickets and tree frogs. In the distance, a solitary bullfrog looking for love twanged. My blood pressure dropped, and my heartbeat aligned with the pulse of the forest.

“There’s dinner to reheat in the fridge,” he said, coming to sit with us.

“I’m sorry.” I leaned against his shoulder.

“How did you get here?” He scanned the driveway, seeing no car.

“Kindly tow truck driver.”

“What happened to the rental car?”

“Got run off the road. The car’s no more.”

“You all right?”

I nodded, and he handed me a beer. I shouldn’t be drinking on antibiotics, but apparently I sounded that defeated.

My gaze roved the yard. There was a blanket spread out on the grass, and a telescope was set up.Aww.He’d planned a picnic dinner, and I’d gone and fucked all that up. Like pretty much everything I touched.

He said, mildly, “I got us a new toy. We can supposedly see Saturn tonight, and I thought that would be cool.”

I perked up. “Show me.”

It turned out that Nick had acquired a very fancy telescope that sensed light and steered itself. One just had to punch in the location of a point in the sky, and it automatically oriented itself to that point. I laughed when he showed me Saturn. It looked exactly like the pictures in elementary school textbooks, so artificial and glowy, only upside down.

We pointed the telescope at the moon, examining the craters and rills. We poked around the Pleiades for a bit, and I realized how much I’d missed this…the childlike wonder of nature all around me—that, and seeing Nick smile.