Page 8 of Sunny Undone

I find myself wondering what Della is going to think about it.

There’s a gray pot to the left of the door with some plants that come back year after year. I don’t know what they are, but my mom bought them for me one time when she remembered my birthday a few years ago. “It’s pretty,” Della says when I kill the engine.

“Thank you.” I don’t know why it matters so much that she likes it.

“And remote.” There’s an awkward laugh, the statement somewhere between an observation and fear, as she climbs off my bike.

“You say that like this is some weird horror movie setup. It’s just my house.”

“It’s very, very dark out here.”

“That,” I tell her, climbing off the bike, “is mostly because it’s nighttime. Plus, you were running around late at night with a flashlight. You don’t seem to be too scared of the dark.”

She huffs a laugh despite herself. “I do what I have to do. Doesn’t mean I like it.”

I grab her bags from the saddlebag and lead the way up the path. The porch light flicks on automatically, washing everything in a warm yellow light. The key is fiddly in the lock, but if you know how to jiggle it, you can manage to make it open the first time. I keep telling myself I’m going to replace it, but then I feel bad about throwing the old lock out. I find it hard to let go of things that have served me well over the years, even if they break.

"Welcome to Casa de Sunny," I say.

Della steps inside and immediately stops, as most people do, not because my home is particularly impressive but because it’s a bit weird. It isn’t exactly cluttered, but nothing in it matches.

It probably seems a bit odd, but I’ve always thought that things have feelings. When I was young, if I dropped candy, I would have to put another one with it on the ground so that one wasn’t lonely. Now that I’m older, when I drive by an abandoned dining table sitting on the curb three towns over, I feel the need to bring it home and fix that one leg that was cracked clean through. I sand it down and stain it dark enough that nobody can tell it was ever broken.

“The coffee table is a choice,” she says.

“You could spend a fortune on a coffee table at a store, but that’s an old cable spool I cut down and refinished. Cost me a dollar fifty and a little bit of effort. And that bookshelf against the wall used to be part of a hotel library. When it was being renovated, a friend of mine told me they were tossing out a whole bunch of old bookshelves and asked if I wanted them. So, I grabbed them. Keep meaning to put them on a plinth, nail them to the wall, paint them navy blue, put some fronting on them, and make them look like custom built-ins.”

“You’re a rescuer,” Della says.

“A what?”

“You rescue things, and clearly people, and…oh my gosh.” She drops to her knees because, at that moment, my three-legged cat walks into the room. She’s gray, with blue eyes that seem to work independent of each other. Della’s right in her assessment, I rescued Mango from the side of the road when she was tiny.

“Her name’s Mango. The vet seemed to think she has the kitten equivalent of learning difficulties. But we’ve found a happy coexistence. I keep her fed and watered, and she’ll sit on the end of the sofa when I’m watching football and ignore me. She hates North, my vice president, and it chaps his ass that he’s the only person on the planet that she hisses at.”

Mango heads on over to Della and bats her head against Della’s thigh.

“You are so cute,” Della says, her eyes filling up with tears. She picks Mango up and buries her head against the fur.

I drop the bags by the stairs and pull out a chair at the dining table. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

Della shakes her head, even as she nuzzles the cat. Mango is in seventh heaven at the attention. “I don’t want to drag you into anything. I just got shook up. The tears are probably exhaustion.”

I figured that might be her response. “Della, I’m trying to figure out if I should stay up all night and keep watch so you can get some sleep, or whether the security precautions I have are enough.”

Della sighs. “If I tell you and they find out about it, they might try to get to you too.”

“So don’t tell me all of it. Tell your part. What were you doing out there?”

Della puts Mango down and pulls her satchel from over her shoulder. “I was doing an environmental assessment.”

“Unless you’re studying some native species that only comes out at night, I’m certain there is more to it than that. Because people don’t generally chase scientists for sport.”

She sighs as she scratches the top of Mango’s head. “I think the wetlands are being deliberately poisoned, and I wanted to see if the readings changed at night.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure. I mean, I say deliberately, but it could have been accidental and those responsible don’t want to be fined. Could be an asshole. Could be someone who benefits from the whole waterfront being trashed.”