Page 41 of Second Alarm
"Honey, I'm at the grocery store, did you want — "
"Yes. Yes, Mom. Whatever you're getting is fine. Yes."
"I haven't finished — "
"Whatever. Yes. Great. Thank you. I have to go. Love you." I hang up.
My mother hasn't been hung up on by me in my life, and she will have opinions later, and I don't care. I look up. Ty iswatching me, not saying anything, looking — of all things — a little sorry.
"I have to go. I forgot I had a — a thing."
"Okay."
"Don't look at me like that."
"How am I looking at you."
"With sympathy."
"I'm looking at you like a person."
"Stop it."
"Okay."
I stand up, gather my coffee and my book in a single sweep, nearly drop the book, catch it, and walk to the counter. I hand Micah a five-dollar tip bill for a three-dollar coffee.
"Micah."
"Yeah."
"Can I ask you a question." I gesture vaguely toward the booth by the window.
"Hanna." His voice isn't unkind.
"Yeah."
"I'm gonna stop you right there."
"Okay."
"Have a good morning." He goes back to the espresso machine. "Say hi to your mom."
I walk out of Peak Grounds with my face composed, paperback tucked under my arm. Two blocks down Fir Street I pull over, put my forehead on the steering wheel of my Subaru, and sit there for the specific length of time it takes me to remember that I'm a paramedic and a grown woman with a mother at a grocery store.
I sit up.
Everybody in this town is trying to kill me.
I drive. I don't tell Cal about any of this, because Cal wouldn't understand it, and because he isn't at the house when I get there,and because for the first time in my life I'm going to sit with an unfunny silence and not try to fill it. I drive to the convenience store by the house to buy my mother a bag of her favorite gummy bears, and let the silence be a silence.
It lasts forty-eight minutes before I call my mother back to apologize for hanging up on her.
Forty-eight minutes is the longest silence of my life.
It's a start.
Chapter 8
