Page 8 of Your Every Wish

We get out of the car and cross halfway through the parking lot when I race back to retrieve my jacket off the back seat. Better get that window fixed soon.

Emma grabs a cart at the entrance and takes her sweet-ass time in the produce section. I navigate to the middle of the store only to return with an armful of items.

“Put them in here.” Emma taps the side of the cart, then eyes my box of Pop-Tarts and grimaces. “You should stick to the outer edges of the store.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s where the good-for-you food is.”

“You mean the stuff you have to cook. I’m not touching the stove in that kitchen.”

“It’s not that bad. It’s actually larger than the one in my former studio, which only had two burners. What, you have some fabulous kitchen where you live?”

“I wouldn’t call it fabulous. Just clean with appliances from the twenty-first century. Oh, and it doesn’t smell like ass.”

Emma shakes her head and pushes the cart toward the deli aisle. “How do you feel about bacon?”

“Bacon?” My half sister is the queen of the non sequitur.

“I’m assuming you’re not a vegan.” She eyes my carton of H?agen-Dazs. “So, bacon? Do you eat it?”

“Yes, I eat bacon.”

“Well, at least we have that in common.”

Bacon and the same useless sperm donor.

We check out of the store and head back to Cedar Pines.

There are hardly any cars on the road, just a few pickup trucks that pull ahead of me in the passing lane.

Admittedly, the drive is pretty. Lots of tall pine trees flanking the highway and everything is greener here than it is in Nevada.

The best part is that it’s far away from Caesars and the tentacles of Brock Sterling, who has threatened to make my life a living hell if I don’t make good on returning his money.

“I hope you don’t mind, but my boyfriend may be coming Saturday,” Emma says.

“No.” Though I do. The place is tight with the two of us. Add a third and it’ll be stifling. “How does that work with him coming? Does he stay the whole weekend?” Kill me now .

“I don’t know because this’ll be the first time since I moved up here. But I assume so. He’s a trader and works in the financial district during the week. So, all we have are weekends.”

Somehow, I don’t see her with a buttoned-up financial type. She strikes me more as the kind who goes for angsty guys with man buns who are either working on their screenplays or novels. Just goes to show how little I know about my half sister.

“Just as long as it doesn’t get weird,” I say. “It’s a small place.”

“Small? It’s the largest home I’ve ever lived in. Granted, it’s a little worse for wear. But I already have ideas of how to make it cute.”

“Don’t get too attached.” I hang a hard right into the trailer park and take the rutted road to our unit.

We start unloading our packages when Emma stops in her tracks. “Do you see what I see?”

“What?”

“Look at the living room window. Is it my imagination or has it been fixed?”

I walk closer, to take a better look. “Not your imagination.” I touch what appears to be a brand-new vinyl casement window. The one with the broken glass is gone. “Oh my God, do you think he heard us?”

“Who?”

“The cute, weird guy. The one who was loitering earlier.”

“I don’t see how he could’ve. We were in the car with the windows closed. Should I go ask him?”

“Just wait until we see him again. For all we know he’s a stalker and used the excuse of installing a new window to get inside and sniff our panties.”

“Kennedy! That’s gross. He probably saw the broken window and, just like you, noted that it would be getting cold soon. I don’t think anyone has lived in this trailer for months. Maybe years. It was a super-kind gesture.”

“That’s the thing: People aren’t usually kind unless there’s something in it for them.”

“Really?” Emma shakes her head and unlocks the door. “That’s sad on more levels than I can count.”

“But it’s true.”

In the fading sunlight, the trailer looks even worse than it did a couple of hours ago.

The lime shag carpet in the living room is the stuff you’d find in a time capsule.

And the dark paneling on all the walls makes the space feel like a cave.

I’d say the view is nice—we can see the creek from the windows—but the birds are so loud they’re giving me a headache.

The furniture is the same era as the carpet—more ’70s than midcentury—and appears to be well used. I wouldn’t be surprised to find varmints living in the couch. Or lice.

The kitchen isn’t much better. I can’t tell if the linoleum floors are speckled or dirty. And the electric stove is the old kind with coil burners and big knobs in a lovely copper-tone color that matches the Formica countertops.

“Why are you putting your Pop-Tarts in the fridge?” Emma laughs. “You know they have a shelf life of, like, a thousand years.”

“It seems safer than putting them in the cupboards.”

“They’re fine, Kennedy. Really.” She opens the pantry door to show me a series of empty but clean shelves.

They’re lined with yellow-and-brown teapot contact paper, reminding me of the garden apartment Madge and I lived in when I was ten.

The kitchen had a similar wallpaper. My mother hated it, but the pattern gave me a strange sense of stability.

The complex also had a pool in the courtyard where I learned how to swim.

For a while that garden apartment felt like paradise.

Then, seven days before my eleventh birthday, we got evicted because Mom hadn’t paid rent in three months.

I take my Pop-Tarts along with a box of sesame crackers from the fridge and begrudgingly shove them on a shelf in the pantry. “Are you happy?”

“I’ve got to check on my column edits,” she says and walks away, leaving me alone in the kitchen.

I wander into the bedroom I’ll be using, unpack the bedding I brought from Vegas, and change out the sheets.

For all its faults, it’s a sunny room, and Emma is right, it does have nice views of the trees.

I open the windows to air out the place and can hear the gurgle of the creek.

Only rushing traffic in my Vegas apartment.

I’ve grown so used to it that I wonder if the quiet here will keep me up at night.

I scroll through my phone for missed calls.

Just the usual suspects, nothing from Mr. Sterling.

Still, I don’t let that lull me into complacency.

It’s only a matter of time before he—or the law—finds me.

I told Hank at Caesars that it was all a big misunderstanding before I left for “vacation.” By now, though, the shit has probably hit an industrial-sized fan.

As soon as we unload this place, I’ll have the money to return his lousy thirty grand. Then I can go back to my real life.

In the meantime, I’m positive Willy stashed the rest of his fortune in a mattress somewhere. No way is this all he had when he died. And I’m betting Emma knows exactly where it is.