Page 63 of Tethered

“Oh no.”

“What’s wrong?”

She points at a telephone pole and the missing-person poster on it. “Another person’s gone missing.”

I stare back at the young, handsome-faced man with the cocky smirk. “Who is he?”

“Abel Kent. I went to high school with him.”

“He’s a friend of yours?”

“God no, he’s a dick.”

I laugh, not expecting that.

“Sorry, that was not nice given the circumstances, but he was just a bully to everyone.”

“There must be something in the water, I swear that’s the fourth missing persons poster I’ve seen since I came back.”

“I know. There are whispers that they’ve all run off together. Wouldn’t surprise me. They’re all?—”

“Dicks?” I finish for her, making her blush.

“Yeah. The first guy that went missing— Parker Giles—he’s like Porter. He married the high school prom queen, prettiest girl in town, and all he does is hurt her and put her down. I don’t understand why she stays when she could do so much better.”

I don’t reply. Unless you’ve been in that situation, it’s impossible to know what it feels like, dealing with the terror of leaving versus the blinding fear of staying. There is no winning, only a risk assessment in which you try to decide which action will hurt less.

She chatters away about her plans for the festival. I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered someone as happy and sweet as Sarah. If someone had asked me if I’d be drawn to that kind of personality, I’d have laughed in their faces. I’d have been wrong. There’s a reason even deadly plants reach for the sun. Something about Sarah pings my protective nature, not unlike how I feel about Dawn and Hannah. I’m not sure I could explain why. I just know if someone did something to strip the light from this woman, the world would be a darker place for it.

Chapter Eighteen

The library is quiet when we enter. No great surprise there. Sarah greets an older woman sitting at the desk when we walk in. She nods to Sarah before her eyes land on me. I recognize the scowl before I remember the face. Judy Penbridge. She used to work in the school library when I attended. She hated me as much as everyone else did, though, to be fair, she seemed to dislike everyone she came into contact with.

“Let’s go over here. Can I get you a drink? We have hot chocolate, coffee, or tea. My advice—go for the hot chocolate. It’s the only thing worth drinking from a vending machine.”

“Duly noted, but I’m good, thanks.”

“Okay. So you want books for Hannah? Do you know what she’s into?”

“I’m not sure. I’m hoping that if I take a few, we’ll find something she’ll like, and then I’ll know what to grab next time.”

“Sounds like a plan. How about I find a few I liked when I was her age, and we go from there.”

“That works for me.”

When she walks away, I get an idea and call her name, getting another scowl from Judy. “Get something with magic. Something where she can dive into an adventure and forget everything going on in the real world for a little while. She deserves that.”

“I think we all do.” She smiles sadly before heading to the children’s section. I take a seat at the empty table in the center of the room and look around. The place hasn’t changed much since I’ve been gone. The library was consistently underfunded, and that was before everything went to shit. I’m more surprised it’s still open than I am that it hasn’t been updated.

A huffing sound comes from the counter, so I lift my head and look at Judy. She isn’t looking at me, but she’s huffing and puffing like she wants my attention. There isn’t anyone else around, so I shrug and ignore her. As much as I want to react, people like that thrive on the drama, creating a scene to flip it around and pretend you caused the problem.

I pick up a book someone left on the table and flick through it. I skim what appears to be a recipe book that might have been in this library since the day it opened its doors in the 60s. The food ranges from casseroles, hamburgers, meatloaf, and potroast to chicken a la King. The pictures are low-grade, but the food looks comforting in that stick-to-your-bones kind of way.

Fuck it. I decide to take it home and have a go at cooking something from it. Without the generations of women who came before me around to impart their wisdom, I always felt nostalgic wonder from movies with big family occasions, where the women would gather and cook. I’m not saying I’d necessarily want that. Riggs has already proved to me a dozen times over that women don’t belong in the kitchen more than men do, just because we have vaginas. It’s not like I can whip it out and use it as a cookbook stand.

Riggs could outcook me with patches covering both of his eyes, and I’m not ashamed to admit that. I do wish I had a recipe or two, though, that I could pull out and wow people with. I’d, at the very least, like to cook something special for my men.

“Okay, so this is what I’ve come up with,” Sarah says, making me jump when she places a stack of books down in front of me. “Most of these are age-appropriate, but this one I thought she might enjoy having read to her.”