Page 126 of Touch the Sky

For now, we’re all right.

For now, we’re home.

Chapter 26

Jacinthe

“Where are we even going?” I ask.

I’m crammed into the backseat of Natalie’s car like some kind of kidnapping victim while she and Maddie sit together up in the front.

“Emergency best friends meeting,” Natalie declares. “My place.”

We’re already halfway to La Cloche. I barely remember getting into the car. Everything since I left the hayloft is a blur.

I know I wanted to stay home. I remember the three of us sitting down to have tea in the kitchen withMaman. Everyone was asking me what happened, but I couldn’t speak. All I could do was stare down at the mug in my hands and think about what Tess said in the pasture.

We should never have moved to this farm at all.

She wouldn’t look at me. She wouldn’t let me touch her.

She was disgusted with me, and she had every right to be. I couldn’t control myself. I couldn’t stop wanting her. I convinced her to do things we shouldn’t, and it almost turned her daughter into a missing person poster.

I should have kept my distance. I should have left my guard up.

I thought I could let her in without something going wrong, but I know better. I’m not meant to have more people in my life.

“You need more than tea,” Natalie is saying upfront, “and I have very strong Scotch.”

“I don’t want to drink,” I tell her. “I should go back toMaman.”

“She’s sleeping,” Maddie says, in the kind of gentle voice you’d use in a hospital room. “Remember?”

I focus on the moments before we left the house, and I do rememberMamanheading to bed by the time we were rinsing the teapot out.

Everything was dark down at the barn when I checked out the kitchen window. I thought about knocking on Tess’s door, and that’s when Natalie and Maddie insisted I needed to get out of there and clear my head.

The two of them keep chatting up front, but I zone out and watch the dark forest fly by outside the windows until we reach the streetlamps of La Cloche. The trick-or-treaters are long gone. Just a few flickering Jack-o-lanterns on porch steps are left to remind me it’s still Halloween.

Natalie lives in a tiny apartment above the health food shop her mother has been running for decades. The place is just off Rue Principale. We park in the small lot behind the shop and climb the staircase running along the back of the building up to Natalie’s door.

The apartment smells like a woodsy candle. The scent of pine gets sharper when Natalie re-lights the huge jar candle on her coffee table after clicking a few lamps on.

A giant painting of the moon with the subtle shape of a woman’s body hidden in silvery beams of moonlight hangs on the wall above the couch. It’s some of Natalie’s best work. Usually I tease her about her ‘naked lady art’ whenever I comeover, but this time, I plop down on the couch without giving the piece more than a glance.

Maddie sits next to me on the couch while Natalie curls up in the papasan chair tucked into the corner next to her cluttered bookshelf.

She really is such a hippie.

They both stare at me like I’m a bomb that’s about to explode, and after a couple seconds tick by, that’s exactly how I feel.

I can’t keep this all in.

Not anymore.

“Tess and I…were hooking up.”

I wait for them to gasp or cheer or fall out of their seats in shock, but all they do is nod.